An ugly place
THERE is no social distancing in Twitter.
It is an anarchic continent, a largely unpoliced micro-blogging universe where politicians and pop stars commune with plebs and journos and sport stars. The common people have equal time and space and this can make for a very busy street of near anonymous conversation.
So if you want to get involved and share your opinion you have to be prepared to take a few bumps and bruises along the way.
Donald Trump has almost single-handedly kept the platform relevant. It’s no news that he uses it like a nuclear-charged megaphone, blasting his misinformation and conspiracy theories, his insults and his re-tweets.
He loves the direct access and doesn’t care what others reply or write about him.
“No filter” is his preferred mode of mass communication.
He said if he was elected President he was going to pull back on his personal use of Twitter, but the political response and the legacy media coverage of his tweets has ensured that he has actually increased his online interactions.
He loves to get personal, he is un-vetted by PR experts. His Tweets are bonafide “The Donald” — and this comes with great risk and reward.
He can start a hashtag overnight. He began Obamagate by tweeting “Obamagate”, but in 2017 he also famously and inexplicably tweeted the word (it wasn’t a word back then) “Covfefe”.
Thanks to the wonders of the internet and the presidential access to a cellular phone, Covfefe is now in the dictionary and forms an important part of the future Trump presidential library.
The successes and failures of Trump on this social media have attracted and repelled politicians from both sides of the aisle.
Any pollie who chooses to engage in this murky world is now acutely aware that it is populated by a rag tag collection of normal peoples, odd people, disagreeable people, bots, zealots, weirdos, clinical idiots and geniuses — in approximately equal proportions.
Pollies also know that if they are getting “trolled” by some account they can “Block” or “Mute” or even “Report” this tweeter.
If you “Block”, the Blocker doesn’t have to see what the Blockee is tweeting. It’s like walking into a different room at a terrible party. You can’t stop the slanging but you don’t have to watch the car crash either.
Scott Morrison is famous for Blocking. He’s Blocked half the country. He blocked me years ago. It was during his “on water matters” era, so maybe that explains it. I don’t know. I don’t care. But my point is; when it works Twitter can be fantastic.
In my experience it can bring politically-opposed people closer together through short form discussion. You can have decent conversation but you don’t have to be best friends forever.
If you are an “honest broker” and you are not rude to others, you can find common ground with just about anybody. You’re not on Twitter to share pictures of your kids and talk about sourdough recipes. You’re engaging with a political landscape and seeking a dialogue with the wider world.
That said...
OK, I really don’t want to get involved in this so I’m not going into detail but as an established observer of Geelong, local, state and federal government, it would be remiss of me not to mention that this week it was reported in the Geelong Advertiser that Senator Sarah Henderson is “suing a former Geelong councillor for defamation over claims she posted derogatory tweets about her”.
OK. I’m just going to say... if somebody had stopped me in the street 10 years ago and said:
“Guess what? In 10 years from now the world is going to be in the middle of pandemic. People will be dying in their thousands, Donald Trump will be the President and you will be confined to your homes for weeks. Millions of people will be unemployed over night, theatres will be closed, the footy will be played in front of empty stadiums, international travel will be impossible. Scott Morrison will be the Prime Minister and his government will be recovering from a $60 billion accounting error. And Senator Sarah Henderson will be suing Jan Farrell for defamation because of two posts on Twitter.”
I think I would have just kept on walking. Shaking my head and thinking;
“Ha, no way will Donald Trump ever get to be President.”