My conscription Tweet causes major butthurt
You read the title. There's no other way of putting it. Because of my past experiences talking about this topic, I did expect getting some butthurt idiots responding to me, but... Let's just say, I didn't expect this.
The whole thing started couple of days ago, just after my previous post regarding the two pandas that recently arrived in Finland and the rather sinister motivations the Chinese government has when handing out these "gifts". The motivation behind this post was the fact that Finnish media did not do a great job exposing the questionable facts behind this. This frustration with the media, combined with sheer curiosity, led me to try out Twitter ads, which allows you to pay to get more exposure for your Tweets. I'm not planning on making this into a habit, but with the lowest amount of money you could spent with the most basic settings, my Tweet was seen by nearly 15 000 people, with close to 700 actions, about 200 of them being clicks on the link to my post. I'd call that a success. Because of this, I decided to try it on another Tweet, and by reading the title you already know what it was about.
The second Tweet I decided to promote was sent on the 8th of January. It's actually a chain of four Tweets in which I shared all of my posts regarding the matter. You see, on that day, another patch of about 12 000 conscripts started their military service and despite the fact that this happens twice every year, it's always big news for some reason. This is one of the most frustrating things about this system. It's so deeply rooted in the Finnish psyche that it's a cause of celebration when somebody literally does what their expected to do. There's nothing special about this. So, I tried to use this occasion to raise awareness about the problems with the system. Originally it had very limited success so when I noticed how well sponsoring your Tweets works, I decided to try again. And of boy, did it get exposure. I used the same amount of money, but compared to the panda Tweet, I got nearly double the number of both views and actions. The number of likes on the two Tweets are currently the same, but the conscription has less re-tweets. On the other hand, it did get seven responses, all of them negative, while the panda Tweet got none. But when you go deeper into the statistics, you notice a weird fact.
Even though the conscription Tweet had nearly double the exposure, it only has 107 people who clicked the link. In other words, compared to the panda Tweet, about half the number of people read the actual post, where I go in to detail about the problems with the system. And considering the responses I got, most of the people who responded probably didn't read it. Despite that, all of them were eager to tell me that I'm wrong, even though I addressed pretty much all of the arguments they were using in my posts. Well actually no, most of the responses were actually personal insults towards me.
Even the "arguments" used weren't really arguments at all. They simply made the assertion that Finland needs conscription. That it's completely necessary and there is no alternative. This simply isn't true. If you remember, in my first post regarding this matter, I pointed out the absurdly large reserves Finland has, compared to the number of troops to be called up according to official plans. More specifically, there are 900 000 trained reservists while the plans call for 280 000 of them to be called up if needed. Basically, the number of trained troops annually could be halved and there would still be enough troops to fill the war time ranks and I pointed this out in my second post on the matter. It would be possible to uphold the current war time strength with a system based on volunteers. This way, you wouldn't need to have an alternative form of service or imprison people who refuse service, the two problematic aspects of the system. Which brings us to the second "argument" used.
The Tweet itself simply pointed out that the system has some major human rights violations and and some other major problems as well. One of the people who responded tried to deny this fact, pointing out to an article in the European Convention on Human Rights, which proves that conscription does not violate human rights. Now, if he had read my post, he would have known that the specific aspect of the Finnish system that violates human rights is the treatment of conscientious objectors. Again, in my second post on this matter, I explained in more detail what the problems is. Even though conscription does not violate human rights per se, the right to conscientious objection is guaranteed under freedom of conscience, according to decisions made by the UN Human Rights Committee, and this is the specific problem with the Finnish system. As I've said before, the previously mentioned UN Human Rights Committee, the UN Human Rights Council and Amnesty International have all pointed out problems with the Finnish system, namely, the punitive length of alternative civil service and the jail sentences of total objectors.
Rest of the comments were insults. According to one guy, the human rights violations are there only in my own opinion because I'm a "fat lefty fuck". For one, calling me a "fat lefty fuck" is a pretty accurate description of me, so I'm not sure what he was going for with that. Not only that, but the human rights violation are not of my own making. I've already pointed this out multiple times, but I'm not the one saying the system violates human rights. I'm simply quoting international organizations tasked with fighting for human rights. And again, he would have known that, if he had clicked the link. Another guy wouldn't leave it on that Tweet. He actually went through my account, leaving insult to at least six separate Tweets. Just because he disagreed with me on something.
The fact is, I've mostly been laughing at comments I got. I mean seriously, somebody got so butthurt over my Tweet that he went around my account just to hurl insults at me. Also, the fact is the more people interact with me, the more exposure I get. So the people insulting me simply helped me reach more people. And that's specifically why I chose to sponsor that Tweet. I wanted to raise awareness to an issue I care about and I'm pretty sure I succeeded at that.
Also, here's my Twitter
The second Tweet I decided to promote was sent on the 8th of January. It's actually a chain of four Tweets in which I shared all of my posts regarding the matter. You see, on that day, another patch of about 12 000 conscripts started their military service and despite the fact that this happens twice every year, it's always big news for some reason. This is one of the most frustrating things about this system. It's so deeply rooted in the Finnish psyche that it's a cause of celebration when somebody literally does what their expected to do. There's nothing special about this. So, I tried to use this occasion to raise awareness about the problems with the system. Originally it had very limited success so when I noticed how well sponsoring your Tweets works, I decided to try again. And of boy, did it get exposure. I used the same amount of money, but compared to the panda Tweet, I got nearly double the number of both views and actions. The number of likes on the two Tweets are currently the same, but the conscription has less re-tweets. On the other hand, it did get seven responses, all of them negative, while the panda Tweet got none. But when you go deeper into the statistics, you notice a weird fact.
Even though the conscription Tweet had nearly double the exposure, it only has 107 people who clicked the link. In other words, compared to the panda Tweet, about half the number of people read the actual post, where I go in to detail about the problems with the system. And considering the responses I got, most of the people who responded probably didn't read it. Despite that, all of them were eager to tell me that I'm wrong, even though I addressed pretty much all of the arguments they were using in my posts. Well actually no, most of the responses were actually personal insults towards me.
Even the "arguments" used weren't really arguments at all. They simply made the assertion that Finland needs conscription. That it's completely necessary and there is no alternative. This simply isn't true. If you remember, in my first post regarding this matter, I pointed out the absurdly large reserves Finland has, compared to the number of troops to be called up according to official plans. More specifically, there are 900 000 trained reservists while the plans call for 280 000 of them to be called up if needed. Basically, the number of trained troops annually could be halved and there would still be enough troops to fill the war time ranks and I pointed this out in my second post on the matter. It would be possible to uphold the current war time strength with a system based on volunteers. This way, you wouldn't need to have an alternative form of service or imprison people who refuse service, the two problematic aspects of the system. Which brings us to the second "argument" used.
The Tweet itself simply pointed out that the system has some major human rights violations and and some other major problems as well. One of the people who responded tried to deny this fact, pointing out to an article in the European Convention on Human Rights, which proves that conscription does not violate human rights. Now, if he had read my post, he would have known that the specific aspect of the Finnish system that violates human rights is the treatment of conscientious objectors. Again, in my second post on this matter, I explained in more detail what the problems is. Even though conscription does not violate human rights per se, the right to conscientious objection is guaranteed under freedom of conscience, according to decisions made by the UN Human Rights Committee, and this is the specific problem with the Finnish system. As I've said before, the previously mentioned UN Human Rights Committee, the UN Human Rights Council and Amnesty International have all pointed out problems with the Finnish system, namely, the punitive length of alternative civil service and the jail sentences of total objectors.
Rest of the comments were insults. According to one guy, the human rights violations are there only in my own opinion because I'm a "fat lefty fuck". For one, calling me a "fat lefty fuck" is a pretty accurate description of me, so I'm not sure what he was going for with that. Not only that, but the human rights violation are not of my own making. I've already pointed this out multiple times, but I'm not the one saying the system violates human rights. I'm simply quoting international organizations tasked with fighting for human rights. And again, he would have known that, if he had clicked the link. Another guy wouldn't leave it on that Tweet. He actually went through my account, leaving insult to at least six separate Tweets. Just because he disagreed with me on something.
The fact is, I've mostly been laughing at comments I got. I mean seriously, somebody got so butthurt over my Tweet that he went around my account just to hurl insults at me. Also, the fact is the more people interact with me, the more exposure I get. So the people insulting me simply helped me reach more people. And that's specifically why I chose to sponsor that Tweet. I wanted to raise awareness to an issue I care about and I'm pretty sure I succeeded at that.
Also, here's my Twitter
Links to my previous posts on this topic:
Part one: http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/11/absurdity-of-finnish-conscription.html
Part two: http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/11/absurdity-of-finnish-conscription_13.html?m=1
Part three: http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/11/finnish-conscription-pt3-militarization.html
Part four: http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/12/finnish-conscription-pt4-how-reserve.html
Part one: http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/11/absurdity-of-finnish-conscription.html
Part two: http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/11/absurdity-of-finnish-conscription_13.html?m=1
Part three: http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/11/finnish-conscription-pt3-militarization.html
Part four: http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2017/12/finnish-conscription-pt4-how-reserve.html
What have Finnish presidential candidates said about conscription?http://helvetinpastori.blogspot.fi/2018/01/conscription-debate-and-election.html
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