Color me shocked
The government propagandists use and abuse social media.
I just looked this up, but I have been on Twitter since October, 2008 and have authored 4,032 Tweets. The vast majority of those Tweets, though, come from my sharing of articles I wrote for The Patriot Post, for monoblogue, or (more recently) here at my Substack. Needless to say and given that averages out to less than one Tweet a day over fourteen-plus years, I would not claim to be a power Twitter user.
Most of my distaste for Twitter comes from the fact I’m limited on characters and don’t like having to break up what I have to say for long threads. (Imagine one of my 1500-word stemwinders as a thread and you’ll understand why.) Coming in a distant second in my hatred sweepstakes is the composition of the Twittersphere that’s mostly fall-off-the-edge-of-the-world left-wingers. If I get a look or two here on Substack from my Twitter followers (who likely follow me in other places on social media) I’m pleasantly surprised. Honestly, I just do Twitter because Substack makes it easy, and there IS always the possibility that Elon Musk might like what I have to say and share it among his 119.9 million followers. I would be happy with just .001% of them becoming paid subscribers to my Substack.
Knowing all that, what Elon Musk (and journalist Matt Taibbi) revealed the other day regarding Twitter’s role in the media coverup of the Hunter Biden laptop story isn’t shocking to me: it’s just more proof of the Left’s collusion in our life, trying to maximize power for themselves over us. (Little do they know that the power they believe they have pales in comparison to the Lord’s power, but that’s a topic for another day.) It’s great that Musk believed these internal communications should come out in the interest of full disclosure and regaining trust in Twitter, but all it did was confirm the suspicions we already had - we just found out the sordid details. Once again, we learn absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The interesting piece of this puzzle to me comes in the realm of advertising. Corporations are being spooked by the leftist-caused turmoil over Twitter and are pulling back their advertising because of it. In turn, the regressive crowd is crowing as Twitter loses revenue, as they believe it means it hastens Twitter’s demise. They’re cool with Musk making electric cars and launching rockets to points far off, and they were definitely down with Musk using Starlink to help out the beleaguered Ukrainians as Russia had destroyed their internet infrastructure as part of its invasion, but make Twitter more even-handed? Nope, he must be destroyed.
(Just for fun, I was curious as to how much a Twitter campaign would run, but when the minimum optimized figure was $100 a day to maximize traffic to my website I could see we were talking about serious coin here. Guess it’s word of mouth for me!)
Regardless, this is a cruel reminder that I grew up in an era when people who wanted to make news wrote out press releases and sent them to the local media, which had several outlets. A real strike would get you a spot on your local TV station 6 o’clock news, but there were also radio stations and small town newspapers that liked getting human interest stories or sharing the school honor roll. Someplace in a bin I still have several clippings my mom cut out from my hometown Swanton Enterprise and The Key detailing my academic achievements. (I even got my picture in there a couple times; luckily it wasn’t on the front page.) Both outlets were chock full of local news and advertising, classified and otherwise - and as I found out thanks to the power of the search engine both are still alive and kicking!
While our social media tries to emulate that hometown feel by tailoring their advetising and other things they show us from what we like, retweet, and search for, their insatiable desire to make themselves a pro-government organ at the same time isn’t going over very well with some of us. What Elon Musk has revealed about Twitter is just seeing a symptom of a larger disease.
At one not-so-long ago point, we used to think the best about everyone, and that the vast majority of people were good and generally looking out for each other. Now as a culture we’re way more jaded and cynical: we often suspect the worst about those we don’t know and warily assume they have bad intentions until they can earn our trust, a point where we’re comfortable with the realization they’re not looking to shake us down or scam us out of our money.
(Truth be told, one facet of that cynicism comes from social media advertising that lures the unsuspecting into a scam, such as the house that’s for rent at an unbelievably low price. And then you have the data scraping for things that would often be the answers to your security questions - “hey, tell us what was the first car you drove!” - and profile cloning - gee, so-and-so’s asked me to be his friend for the fourth time now - to look out for as well.)
Yet I can’t help but wonder our longtime failure to adhere to a once-ubiquitous Judeo-Christian moral code has led to this, yet another symptom of our mainstream cultural disease. Why else would media withhold vital news in order for their chosen side to maintain power? I suppose yellow journalism remains alive and well in America, and its stain will outlast whatever Elon Musk reveals unless We the People turn it off.