Scrubbing the sewer that is Twitter
Yeah. It's a thankless (and endless) task and it takes all of us.
My friend Al Robinson (the force behind the awesomely-named My Left Nutmeg) shared the tweet below a few days ago. The reply to @RNCResearch’s post about Vice President Kamala Harris is from the first selectwoman (non-New Englanders? That’s like our mayor) of Brookfield, Conn., and my goodness gracious, this was bad:
Ms. Carr, a veteran and an anti-vaxxer, posted this tweet several times after multiple tweets referencing the president. I and countless others spread this around, and some of us also tagged the FBI and the Secret Service because this for all the world looked like a credible threat from Ms. Carr.
My jumping into this conversation is the closest thing I’ve ever had to something going viral (the last I checked, just my tweet was closing in on 70,000 views). I mostly stopped answering her supporters because, no, chowder monkey, this wasn’t her reaction to the spy balloon. One doesn’t “kill” a balloon. One pops it, and the tweet was posted after multiple tweets that did not reference the balloon. Was that just ignorance in how social media works? Earlier, Ms. Carr took something called a “civility pledge.” Was this tweet the result of enthusiastic dislike of spy balloons?
After a while, I mostly sat back and watched. Plus, I got tired of the name-calling, where one taunter told me to go get my “sixth booster,” which I would if there was one available.
Few things annoy me more than taunts that don’t sting.
While that shitstorm was brewing, Ms. Carr took to Facebook to post a tweet about Random Act of Kindness Day, but gun safety advocate Fred Guttenberg (and father of a daughter murdered in the 2018 Parkland school massacre in Florida), wasn’t having any:
That comment has been removed, but back on Twitter, yes, this happened:
I know, I know. This is just one account, so it’s a small victory, almost not worth noting, but enough people (across the political spectrum) saw the original tweets as credible threats. Even the Twitter sewer said nah.
I do not know when or if Ms. Carr will return to the sewer. I do not know if she’s the type to use her suspension in her fundraising for future office (“Shadow banned by antifa!”) but just for today, this feels about right.
One thing that the balloon crisis showed me was that my Facebook friends list was chalk full of goofballs with high level security clearance
When one of the clueless cultists asked me if I was aware of what was happening I told the brainwashed dupe that apparently I wasn’t privy to the same information that he was getting
When I asked him if he was informed in a Facebook intelligence briefing even some of the other goofballs laughed at that
Some of the goofballs were posting maps showing where missile sites and troop bases were
Why do the Chinese need to send a balloon with goofballs posting stuff like that on social media???
They say one thing and when they get called out for how stupid it is they pretend they meant something else
The goofballs that I know have stopped with the balloon posting at least for now
I can only imagine what the next faux outrage will be
Posting essentially the same words in response to every mention of President Biden shows a callous disregard for anything like sane political discourse, whatever her original intent may have been.
I'm so tired of Republicans posting the most outrageous statements, getting called out on it, then backpedaling with "just kidding" or some other meaningless excuse.