To tweet is human, to delete divine
It’s one thing to post an unfiltered ego live feed as a hotel mogul-reality TV host, and another when you hold the highest office
first got on Twitter to simultaneously distract and self-express at my day job. It was way back in 2008, when the world was still high on hope and people freely used the term “post-racial” as if we had cured systemic injustice, thank you very much, and we could talk to one another in brief instant flurries with something resembling civility.
My 140-character journey began when my friend Diana G chatted me a no-fuss elevator pitch during the mid-workday afternoon slump: “Hey, I’m on this new site where you can write and post short thoughts. I think you’d be good at it.” Since then I’ve tweeted once and now multiple times a day for the past near-decade, and it has led me to job opportunities, celebrity run-ins, career boosts, and less glamorously, unsolicited insults, circular arguments with strangers and the emotional maelstroms of being unfollowed or never followed in the first place.
My creative process is simple. For example, say I am rushing to a meeting near Grand Central, bemoaning the fact that I’m not a morning person. I see a pigeon who has waddled in between two businesspeople waiting in line to buy coffee at a corner cart. Before the conscious part of my brain kicks in, the Twitter app is already open and my fingers are dashing off “A pigeon is waiting in line for coffee between two suits. I guess someone else also finally finished Lean In.”
Within seconds of posting any tweet, I’m checking and rechecking the screen to see what the favourability index is on my random speech bubble. If it’s in the double digits for likes, I tell myself that the West Coast hasn’t risen yet. My best tweet found favour with more than 40,000 people, the worst was deleted. The statistics are undeniably grotesque, yet compelling in their rigid judgement. It’s like a standup comedy set, except the feedback per joke is spread out over a much longer period, and you get specific detail on who responded and can adjust your delusions accordingly.
It makes me wonder about United States President Donald J. Trump’s Twitter origin story. According to his Twitter account, he has been a member since March 2009 and has tweeted more than 34,000 times. Did he get bitten by a radioactive exclamation point? It would certainly explain his short bursts of impassioned diatribes. Every single post sounds like a text hastily composed after 3am and sent by accident — Must! Post! One! Last! Thought!
Holding power
Full disclosure, I sometimes find it easier to picture Trump not as the president, but as some kind of soothsayer’s curse. It’s easier to think of him as a particularly nasty weather system, something you can shutter the windows against, despite the damage it will cause. But regardless of his atomic structure, he currently holds power, and he needs us to know this, as well as every other uncensored thought of his.
Trump has always been known for his uninhibited social media style. After he won the election, the question became, was he going to keep this up once he became president? It’s one thing to post an unfiltered ego live feed as a hotel mogul-slash-reality TV host known for your buffalo-wing-that-fell-underthe-couch of a personality, and another when you hold the highest office in the nation.
I do understand that Twitter is about embracing your brand — mine is melancholic amusings, his is acute histrionics. However, the fate of a nation doesn’t rest on my hot take on Beyonce’s Grammy snub, but it does on his latest review of Saturday Night Live. Being president requires embracing a different brand, one that sets self-interest aside.
Ours isn’t doing that. Who knows which world leaders have already muted him? America’s blue check mark is in jeopardy. Aparna Nancherla is a comedian and writer.