Over the weekend, Ian Mendes, a radio host from Ottawa, tweeted about Donald Trump’s “pussy-grabbing” video.
Then Mendes got a reply from Daniel Munro, an associate director for a nonprofit called the Conference Board of Canada. Munro took issue with the way Mendes' tweet seemed to put the responsibility on women to protect themselves from sexual assault.
But, possibly because both men are from Canada — the politest place on earth — or because they're just good guys, things DIDN'T turn into a massive argument!
Mendes said Munro made a great point, explaining he was only talking about girls because he was the father of two girls, and then Munro apologized for jumping the gun.
The delightfulness didn't stop there, either! Munro noticed that Mendes' tweet was getting a bunch of backlash and offered to delete his part of the conversation.
But Mendes — once again being a Canadian hero — said the positive reactions totally outweighed any blowback he was getting.
The wonderful lone ray of sunshine amid the almost constant fighting on Twitter was noticed by users, one of whom screenshot it. It was retweeted over 30,000 times.
Mendes told BuzzFeed News that he didn't know Munro before this whole thing and the two only followed each other after their conversation started getting a ton of attention.
"The reactions to this exchange have been overwhelmingly positive, but in many ways I'm saddened by that," Mendes said. "It's depressing to think that two people having a civil and pleasant exchange on social media is such an anomaly, that it requires the story to go viral."
He said that one time he was hit by a baseball during a live broadcast and he knew that was going to go viral, but he didn't think something like this would ever get a ton of attention.
"I had lots of people telling me to delete the tweet," he said. "But I did feel like there was a lot of positive discussion going on around it. So in the end, I did feel like the greater good of positive discussion outweighed the barrage of negative tweets I was getting. I want the same thing everyone else who tweeted at me wants: a safer world for women."
"Ian is the real hero here," Munro told BuzzFeed News.
"He displays heroic levels of civility and patience. He set the tone for our exchange and showed incredible restraint when faced with others' criticisms," Munro said.
Munro said he believes it's important to be civil, but also make sure that being polite isn't stopping people from having tough conversations.
"Expectations of proper etiquette, decorum, politeness can be used an excuse to avoid tough conversations about racism, sexism, and other injustices," he said.
Oh, also, things weren't all civil between Mendes and Munro, however.
