Ground Zero Mosque Tweeter's Tribulations

It's hard to find a tougher job right now than the one of Oz Sultan, the social media consultant for Park51. Haven't heard of that? Well you might have read something about a mosque being built near Ground Zero. Park51 Lower Manhattan Community Center is the name of the actual mosque, and Sultan has had to deal with a barrage of hate tweets to actual questions from reporters. This story that's blown to monumental proportions has put Sultan in the middle of the debate as every politician and media organization chimes in. Capital profiled the social media emissary's experience since taking up the task five weeks ago. He originally set up a snarky Twitter feed because that's what gets noticed on Twitter, but after days of insults and vitriol, Sultan has switched plans. He's trying to become an informer, while driving intelligent discussion. It sounds difficult. Sultan told Capital: "We started trying to at least have some conversations online but what happened was everything started turning really, really, really negative," Sultan said. "People are sitting there shoving visceral and vitriol down your throat and, because of the sensitivity of the situation, at the same time, you have to be sensitive to them. It's like post-modernism in action. "You know, the reason it became snarky was if you understood the culture of Twitter, it is predominantly millenial and there is so much pop culture idiom and American culture idiom. So if you're not accustomed to the culture, you won't understand it. We had people sending us videos of death metal bands talking about ripping us apart and when we posted that the intern would be removed from the team, they said that we were beheading them." He continues: "The goal is to educate," he said. "It's a Manhattan issue, but it's also a global issue, to build interfaith and build a community that is already in itself insular to people coming from the outside, to open up and to kind of sort of pick out the bad apples and work with them." I hope he's getting paid well for this.

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Ground Zero Mosque Tweeter's Tribulations

Ryan Derousseau

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Ryan Derousseau