Please RT!
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| – @RobDelaney |
Apparently I’ve been waiting my whole life for Twitter.
Allen Ginsberg had to roam to streets to see the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness. I do it through a retina display.And politics has been waiting for Twitter, too.
Last year, Politico’s Ben Smith recognized last year that Twitter was draining the life from his blog. “What I’m doing right now is just incredibly old school,” he said. “I might as well have ink all over my fingers and be setting type.”
Since then Smith has joined BuzzFeed, which is attempting to harness the addictive and instantly viral nature of Twitter to cover the 2012 in a way that makes news and breaks news. There’s no other choice.
One of the reasons I moved from my LOLGOP focus on Facebook to Twitter (besides my addictive brain and the discovery of Tweetdeck) was that the progressive movement was crushed on social media in the 2010 elections. Facebook is a great place for like minds to convene. But, for me, Twitter is where ideas are shaped.
And Twitter is perfect for progressives/liberals/people who enjoy birth control. Why? We tend to be discerning and self-critical. Also, the absurd plays well in short bursts. I’ll let you decide what it means that there is no @RobDelaney, @BorowitzReport or @pourmecoffee on the right.
Actually, I’ll tell you why. They’re fracking funny in a way that is contagious.
Mean-spirited, crusty teleprompter humor by nature plays to an inside crowd. Most people have no idea what’s funny about a black President using a teleprompter when white Presidents have done it for years. I don’t. But I know that right-wingers find any teleprompter jokes, like a joke about the First Lady’s exceptional physique, hilarious. That’s propaganda.
Funny is just funny.
A new Pew study shows that liberals are more likely to block people over political disagreements on social media. I’ve blocked people. And I’ve been blocked by some people I’d love to follow including Erick Erickson, Jennifer Rubin and Meghan McCain. They crack me up. But when I say dicky things to them, as I did, I deserve it.
Before Andrew Breitbart died, I told him that a new study showed that Fox News viewers are almost as uninformed as Andrew Breitbart. He blocked me. I understand.
That’s the wonder of Twitter. If you don’t like something, don’t follow. If you hate it, block it. But don’t overestimate the value of your own opinion. If you feel the need to tell Kelly Oxford why you unfollowed her, you deserve to be blocked and denied all the goodness she puts out for free. I’m not saying she does that. But she should.
Twitter is a conversation multiverse. It gives us all a chance to interact and engage with people we would never have met before. This is a power we don’t yet understand.
I joke that the Green Revolution in Iran ended because Michael Jackson died. But I’m not really joking.
The weight of our collective interest focused through a finite medium such as Twitter can change the world. At least that’s what I believe now. So I might as well tweet it. Or tweet it for me, so I can RT it.Thanks.
