As I write this, the chess pieces are leaping around the board after Elon Musk’s $43 billion dollar bid to buy Twitter. And various parties and interests are trying to resist and stop him.
We use this space to opine on entertainment. And social media is entertainment, but often much more.
It was obviously more in how Donald Trump used Twitter as a bully pulpit for his bullying and other vile pursuits. But also, in a way, entertainment, if as that in a way like the Fast & Furious franchise, with street races, car wrecks, robberies and such – horrifying to anyone with a sense of such grown-up and, yeah, woke principles as propriety, rationality, the truth and such.
And I’d argue – both playfully and seriously – that the news about Trump’s lame stab at creating a wrong-wing alternative to Twitter, Truth [ahem!] Social, has been some of the most hilarious and gratifying recent entertainment, at least to me. Title it “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (Except at Their Own Feet)” – a farce and a romp through the deep valley of MAGA incompetence. A horrifying yet hilarious pile-up car wreck of the sort I just couldn’t turn my attention away from because it was a barrel of monkey laughs. But I digress….
Yeah, I have an account on Twitter. Even when I am feeling like I need a break from the irritating shite that comes with the social media phenomenon over on the Book of Faces, I still check on Twitter. So one could say, at least by default, that Twitter is my favorite social media. (which is also damned by faint praise exponentially).
While these days I’m even more of an occasional poster rather than reader on Facebook, the equation flips when it comes to Twitter. I have a piddling 169 followers on Twitter (in contrast to my rather current robust FB count of 2,658 friends). I generally only Tweet when I am trying to get people to read something I have written.
I think if I had more free time I could at least do some audience building on Twitter. But I also have to accept what may be the fact that I will never come within parsecs of being a social influencer (and besides, what I consider to be my “social influencer” is single-malt scotch whisky, as it makes me more social. But, again, I digress). My writing can too often dance and weave around and through and up, down and beside my salient points. Kind of like Democratic election campaign messaging; too much detail and nuance to grab the short attention span of too many among our American populace. But yet again, I digress….
I see the core power and charm of Twitter as the way it encourages being terse and pithy. Even after its word count limit doubled from 140 characters to 280, tweets remained largely under 140, asTechCrunch reports. Ergo easier to skim than FB. And also easier for Huffington Post to write articles about conservative inanities and then follow them with a chorus of humorous and mocking tweets.
I do like to comment on the tweets of those I follow. I see it as being an Ed McMahon to all their Johnny Carson-ing.
If Musk does take over Twitter and transforms it into the sort of “free speech” forum that his libertarian leanings hope for, I suspect it will eventually be as if one of his SpaceX rockets runs out of fuel before it leaves the atmosphere and plummets back to Earth. Then the Musky one might have to use his tunnel boring company to find whatever might be left if his massive investment … which would be entertaining indeed.
Oh, and as long as this column is about Twitter, I should end it with some hashtags. #ATwitIsADamnFool #ProgressivePopulistRocks
Feature Film: “Honest Thief” – Though online movie review aggregations rate this “romantic thriller,” I guess one would call it, as only a bit better than OK, I always enjoy Liam Neeson being, as he has in a number of other films, the lone man against far greater forces. At a compact 90 minutes long, it’s a somewhat compact diversion with enough chuckles and heart to raise it above the usual thriller clichéd collection of chases, turns and twists.
TV Series: “The Thing About Pam” – Renée Zellweger shines in a fat suit in this clever based-on-a-true-story tale about a manipulative and duplicitous suburban housewife who kills her best friend and then helps railroad the dead friend’s husband for the murder. Until….
Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2022
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