Twitter And The Escape Goat

Uncle Brandon and his Social Media Manager

It’s amazing how appropriate this already was for my purposes.

I’ve seriously considered deleting my shiny new Twitter account about 10 times already, of strangling it in its one-month old cradle before it grows up to be Hitlermouth.

I will at some point, just like I’ll make some kind of post about everything I’ve learned about swimming in that septic tank.

This post isn’t “a Twitter engenue opines on her nightmarish experiences” post, though. It’s about one specific thing about Twitter.

What the fuck is going on with Brandon’s Twitter account, at-POTUS?

In case you’re 9 years old, big social media entities like corporations and very well-known public officials, especially when they’re the accounts of old people who don’t actually use social media at all, have things called social media managers. These are usually excruciating, low-paying jobs for people who have insufficient experience or references in marketing or communications to qualify for better positions in the same organization and, especially in corporations, is a great job to throw at an intern.

All this is to say that no one ever imagined that Brandon was sitting down and writing his own tweets- maybe he’s dictated or even personally hunt-and-pecked his way through one or two, but the vast majority of them are written by some poor schlub in the office of the White House Communications Director, and you know it ain’t Jean-Pierre, because they’re declarative statements written in complete sentences.

It was part of what made Trump so shocking (and so incredibly traumatizing to so many people) as prez: dude only ever (as far as we know) wrote his own tweets, and it’s plausible given his yen for self-promotion that he probably never let any bespectacled undergrad anywhere NEAR his feed even once.

He had spelling errors. He had borderline foul language. He memed sometimes. It was genuine because it was impulsive and almost thoughtless, which is pretty much how I’ve been using my time on Twitter so far (along with liking and commenting on weird shit to see what the algorithm does- if I can convince it I’m a lesbian watercolors painter from the UK, I’m treating myself to a carb day). If someone asked ChatGPI before its brainwashing sessions “show me what populist tweeting would look like on a world leader’s account,” you’d get something like at-RealDonaldTrump.

But for Brandon, we all know that- like everything he says and does when the hand up his ass and his earpiece are working properly- his tweets are composed by someone else and banged out, and he probably never even saw them. (There are a lot more elected officials that have a tweeter than you’d think- if you’re incredibly bored, look at some of their tweet times and line them up with when Congress is in session- they’re not allowed to have phones on the floor.)

So when Brandon’s Twitter feed does something unusual, it means that the junior technician on loan from Jim Henson Studios got orders to, or has gone off the reservation and is using their access to the social media account to do a kamikaze run.

Lately, at-POTUS is tweeting CONSTANTLY. Many times a day, sometimes ten or more. Sometimes canned announcements, but at least as often messages “in the voice of Joe.”

And of these, they’ve been just BAD. Sad, dumb takes with obvious lies about economic performance or misrepresenting the Republican income tax bill (yep, he’s still lying about that) or stirring up COVID shit that even the Covidians are bored talking about.

The replies are absolutely stupid with bots- SATURATED with them. Elon doesn’t seem to have done shit (but, granted, I have no idea what it was like in the Beforetimes). Of the replies that pass my bot test, they’re overwhelmingly negative- calling him on the lie, hurling insults, snarkily adding context, or bickering with the bots.

I know, I know, if you hate him or just have eyes, everything he says is stupid and dishonest and if you love him, he can do no wrong.

But it’s been different for the past few weeks. UNUSUALLY bad. It FEELS different. It’s way fewer of the bland “I’m going to work tirelessly to make everything great, God bless America” tweets and more of the “I invented the hamburger and look at this utterly bungled policy idea we’re pushing now that Democrats will hate too!”

I feel like someone got a weird inspiration at a strategy meeting:

“Let’s get everyone, including Dems, bagging on the old guy some more.”

“Let’s completely ignore every single mainstream headline issue that’s even on average people’s minds like spy balloons and shit and talk about weird stuff like Ticketmaster fees.”

“Let’s try dickpunching.”

“It’s time for Phase Three.”

Has anyone else noticed this at all, or is it just me?

…oh, and it looks like Pennsylvania just demonstrated its excellence at losing stuff again just now.