Tag: twitter

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Fake Doctors And Twitter Grifters

One thing I’ve learned from being on social media is that it’s extremely easy to become successful by pretending to be something you’re not. Within the political sphere, all you need to do is play into a particular demographic, and you’ll earn a rabid following in no time. This often leads to people playing fast and loose with their supposed belief systems in the aims of chasing success.

This ties into grifter culture, which I outlined a little in this post: http://meatgoblet.com/pour-your-40oz-out-for-the-grifters/. This is when people intentionally develop an online persona that appeals to a particular demographic for the purposes of growing a brand and making money. It’s far easier to become “famous” by playing into the base of one of the two political groups in the U.S. (or leftism, Libertarianism, etc. to a lesser degree), than it is to take a candid, non-partisan approach to politics.

The overwhelming majority of the #Resist and #Maga crowds on Twitter™ are composed of people who have never said anything even remotely intelligent or insightful, yet managed to end up with thousands of followers. This calculated grifting allows relatively mediocre individuals to attain some degree of success they would never have attained otherwise.

A lot of these unexceptional people managed to hit these high follower accounts by engaging in mass following events, or MFEs. I just made that term up because I have no idea what they’re actually called, or if they even have a name. Regardless, they look like this:

They tweet out lists of others within the same cult, who usually identify themselves via a hashtag in their bios (#Resist for example), then follow each other to increase their follower counts.

I guess a lot of them do this to feel like they’re actually important or valid because of their artificially inflated follower counts, but this count rarely ever leads to actually engagement, i.e. people interacting with their tweets, which is sad and funny at the same time.

Congrats on those 2 likes. A 20k follower to 2 like ratio is abysmal. As a comparison, I’ve never broken 100 followers on Twitter™, yet I’ve had numerous tweets make it into the hundred of likes, and even had one almost reach 3000 likes (aren’t I cool?). These goofballs are lucky to hit 50 likes on a post while sitting at tens of thousands of followers. This is probably because most of their followers only followed them to receive a follow back and inflate their own following. This, combined with them never saying anything of substance leads to a glut of over-valued, under-performing accounts on Twitter™.

Then we have the heavy-hitter grifter accounts. I’ve highlighted a few of these before, like Rex Chapman and the Lincoln Project, but you also have accounts like George Takei and BrooklynDad_Defiant.

George Takei is primarily known for playing Commander Sulu in the original Start Trek, but eventually developed an online following through social media like Twitter™. He started out posting relatively innocuous content, but at some point, decided to go full-bore morally-bereft grifter mode. Now he posts stuff like this:

Here he is fluffing up Andrew Cuomo, during a time when Cuomo was both making horrible Covid decisions that led to a lot of deaths in New York (Takei lives in San Francisco), and fighting off the early accusations of sexual impropriety. He had no problem doing this, because he has no moral qualms with backing whomever is important within the Democrat circle at any given time for online likes and validation. Here is his only tweet in response to Cuomo eventually resigning as governor:

Luckily, none of his followers held him to task for propping this guy up for a year, only to throw out a half-hearted disavowment in a weak attempt to sweep his constant endorsements under the rug. He can just repeat this cycle because he appeals to a very under-informed, lowest-common denominator portion of Democrat voters, the same type who non-ironically get their information from Occupy Democrats™.

He acts as a liberal version of a Candice Owens or Charlie Kirk type. He only has to play into a specific base, and doesn’t need to worry about any of those annoying things like moral consistency, or actual facts.

As bad as George Takei is, he’s not nearly as bad as Brooklyn Dad Defiant. This guy will claim that water is wet, then claim it’s dry the very next day as long as he gets a paycheck for doing so. Here he is calling out “cultish idiots”, while appealing to cultish idiots:

Here he is calling out Apple’s terrible business practices, then pulling a little flippity-doo and simping for Apple now that it’s politically convenient to do so in the wake of the completely idiotic Joe Rogan controversy:

There’s actually a twitter account that was started to highlight every hypocritical post this grifty goofball makes. He is seriously that bad. He’s got at very least dozens of these flip flop tweets. He’s also getting paid by the Democrats:

It seems it pays fairly well to be a political grifter on Twitter™. It wouldn’t surprise me if guys like George Takei and Rex Chapman are also having their pockets padded for the idiotic stuff they continually post.

We can see now that a lot of this political grifting that takes place on Twitter is quite beneficial, both to grow a platform and further one’s career opportunities, and also as a means of making money. George Takei peddles all of his goods for sale via a linktree in his Twitter™ bio for example.

Given that this grifting can be a great job opportunity, why wouldn’t non-famous people decide to hop in on the action too? Well, they do. I covered Eugene Gu in a previous post. He’s the guy who went to Doctor School™, but never actually became a practicing doctor. He then garnered fame by a taking a picture of himself kneeling in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick. After the ensuing wave of new followers, he started LARPing as a practicing doctor and giving out medical information on different subjects. There were also some issues with him potentially engaging in stalking and online harassment as well, but that’s beside the point.

Eventually, he either deleted his Twitter™ account, or got banned, but he’s no longer with us on the bird app. 😢RIP, bro.

Have no fear though. Once other people realized you could literally just pretend to be a doctor on Twitter™ and sucker impressionable people into following you, many a person did just that. (You can pretend to be a lawyer too, to great effect.)

We’re gonna look at one of the more blatantly fake doctor (or nurse) accounts that is currently doing well in the grift-o-sphere. I present to you, “Emily Winston”.

First off, notice that they follow 26.6k accounts. This is a good sign that they engaged in the above mentioned “MFE” follow-for-follow tactic to initially build their account up. This is an effective technique, because gullible people see your large following, and assume that you gained this following legitimately, and therefore must be a good account to follow.

Also, right off the bat, the account almost seems like a satirical liberal account. They have the Trump-is-bad header, the obligatory #BidenHarris hashtag, and… what’s that? Computer… enhance. It appears to be some sort of link to a t-shirt shop. Computer… scan link for viruses, then engage. Beep beep boop!

It’s just as I feared. It appears to be a shitty teespring-style t-shirt site. My guess is that the entire Twitter™ account was created and manufactured for the prime purpose of selling t-shirts to liberal wine aunts. Hence the almost satirical profile and generic posts like the following:

These are the types of posts an artificial intelligence designed to produce the most generic 2020’s era liberal tweets imaginable would output. Beep beep boop. “Guns are bad, please like.” Beep boop “Everything I don’t like is white supremacy. Retweet please.” Beep beeeeep. “The next President should be an indigenous woman in a wheelchair with Asperger’s. Buy my t-shirts.” BoooooooOoOoOp.

They don’t just link to the t-shirts in their profile though. They literally try to sell this crap under each meticulously coifed tweet they post:

Their entire timeline on Twitter™ is also just 95% posts trying to sell these goofy-ass shirts. I’m thoroughly convinced the person running this account is probably a Republican voter who saw a business opportunity to fleece goofy Occupy-Democrats types and took it. They even retweet Occupy Democrats™ tweets:

This is evidently where they learned to beg for retweets under every single post they shit out. Very clever actually. I’m legitimately kind of impressed. It makes me want to create fake generic liberal and conservative accounts and fleece goofy people out of their money via shitty merch as well. Great business strategy.

This is the funniest thing they’re posted so far:

“She” is really being sincere here guys. The person who is definitely not a guy pretending to be a liberal nurse lady on Twitter™ to sell t-shirt to people is begging you to get a dose of the Corona juice. Look how tired and sincere “she” looks in that picture. Wait a minute… computer… search the google database for stock photo “TiredNurse.jpg”. BEEP BOOPITY BEEP.

Initiating image scan. Match found. Boop. Bottom right. 100% match. Beeeep.

Gotcha, scumbag. Using a stock tired nurse photo on your “sincere” Twitter™ post. Unbelievable. How could a t-shirt peddling salesman stoop this low? I actually thought you were a tired nurse who definitely worked at a completely slammed hospital, yet has the time to sell t-shirts off Twitter™ all day long. Jokes on me, huh? Boy was I gullible.

But seriously. There are people so smooth brained that they see accounts like this and think that they’re legit. How? How is anybody this gullible? I wonder what kind of money this dude is pulling in a year off this grift. I want him to mentor me in the ways. Teach me the ways of bamboozling doofuses out of their money, Sensei. If you stumble across this post, hit me up dude.

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The Brands™ Are At It Again

Boy I sure do love brands. They’re so quirky and relatable. They’re just like us people!

Take McDonald’s™ for example:

f! F! FFFFFFfffFFFff!!! OMG F!

I definitely relate to this tweet, McDonald’s™! I dropped a french fry while I was stuffing my face in the car once. LOL! I’m gonna like this tweet along with the other 10k obviously well adjusted, definitely not lonely, sad people following a fast food company on social media and liking all their posts like their quirky aunt posted them.

McDonald’s™ is practically my best friend at this point. I’m even thinking about asking McDonald’s™ to be the best man at my wedding. I hope McDonald’s™ says yes.

4.3 million people follow the McDonald’s account. All these brand accounts are followed by millions of people. Who are the people following these brand accounts? Who desperately needs to hear what Arby’s has to say about social issues?

This is probably the most Idiocratic (like the movie) thing about our society currently. Billion dollar companies using social media to seem relatable, and endear themselves to their consumers, who are nothing more than a source of revenue to them. It’s so creepy and depressing that it works so well.

I wrote about how insufferable the concept of “relatable brands” is in my January 11, 2021 post: right here.

I think the worst part is that there seems to be a mighty large overlap between the people who proclaim “Corporations are not people!”, and those that follow and like corporate accounts because they make cute quips or send out virtue signalling tweets about social issues. (see Ben & Jerry’s). Pick a lane champ. Are corporations evil, or are they excluded from that once they mirror your goofy-ass political opinions or make a few funny meme jokes?

The other day Facebook™ went down for some reason, most likely due to incompetence, and the other brands jumped on that fact to increase their P.R. scores amongst the meatbags on social media.

Get it? Because Facebook™ was down, but Twitter™ was still up. This is obviously because Twitter™ is a competently run company, and nothing bad would ever happen to them. Except this thing that happened last year of course:

Your website got hacked by a 17-year-old kid, guys. Maybe stop gloating, seeing as how your hack actually did damage and included theft.

But anyways, the tweet was popular, because there’s this creepy political divide between Facebook™ and Twitter™, wherein one is considered the “liberal” platform, and one the “conservative” platform. This is of course idiotic, because you’re responsible for who you follow and what shows up on your feed on both platforms. If your feed is garbage on either, this is a “you” problem. The garbage is looking back at you in the mirror, my friend. Consequently, both platforms poorly enforce their Terms of Service, and both platforms poorly filter out propaganda. I cover this in my previous posted linked above. Yet takes like this persist:

A bunch of folks (the impressionable ones at least) want to delete Facebook™ and Instagram™ now because a “whistleblower” who used to work at Facebook decided she needed to get famous and start making some real big league money (allegedly).

There’s already numerous things about this scenario that smell fishier than a wet market, but I’ll avoid going too much into it because it’s still too early to blow the whistle on this dubious story just yet. She does have connections to Democratic politicians (who are generally anti-Facebook) and is being propped up by twitter (Facebook’s competitor) already, which is suspect to say the least.

I do find it funny she’s being called a “whistleblower”, just like Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning. The difference of course being that those three put themselves at risk to challenge the government’s power, while Haugen is fighting for the government to have even more power in regulating what citizens can say or post. If she ends up in a cushy political position within five years time, I will be exactly 0% surprised. But let’s all clap and cheer and pretend Facebook™ is the biggest threat to “weaken our Democracy” as Haugen puts it, and not government mandated censorship.

The thing that made me roll my eyes the hardest at all this, is that Facebook™ isn’t the only problem here, but Instagram™ is too. Yes, the website where people post endless selfies of themselves and food pictures is also a threat worthy of a government hearing. Thank you for speaking up about the harmful pictures, brave “whistleblower”. Hopefully you don’t get waterboarded for speaking this truth to power.

It’s led to this kind of nonsense reporting:

This kind of reporting even led to a #DeleteInstagram hashtag trending on Twitter™.

Yes everybody, delete your Instagram accounts because a “whistleblower” claims the platform harms teenage girl’s self-image. Lets also burn our rock n’ roll LPs because they’re corrupting the youth and turning them onto the ways of the devil. Sweet sweet moral panic. Good to see nothing ever really changes as the decades roll by. Definitely don’t take active participation in the lives of your children, or anything like that. Let’s try to use the government to ban or shut things down like rational non-authoritarians.

We’re doing it guys! We’re creating further protections for elected officials and celebrities! Keep going! Maybe soon we can start jailing or executing people who speak ill of the King. We’ll be back in the 1700’s before we know it, and all because moral panic is an effective tool to convince dumb people to give up their rights and give more power and protections to the wealthy and elite. Yay!

That’s it little meatbags… get angry at the technology. Get angry at the scary technology that you can use as a proxy for all of society’s problems. Burn the effigy! It’s definitely Instagram’s fault that we live in an empty, narcissistic society full of people who feel the need to post 7000 selfies a day on social media for attention. That problem will definitely go away if Instagram doesn’t exists. These people won’t just continue seeking validation on some other platform.

Like this for example:

Yes, she’s finally free after deleting Instagram™, yet her entire Twitter™ feed is endless pictures of herself. Good thing she deleted evil Instagram™, and broke the cycle of constantly posting pictures for other’s validation on the internet. See how Instagram™ is quite obviously not the problem in this scenario? It’s like complaining that Pepsi™ is full of sugar, and bad for you, then switching over to Coke™ and patting yourself on the back for making a positive change.

So now that I’ve gone completely off into the weeds, I’ll get back on the track I started this post about, which was the brands reacting to the Twitter™ post above. Get ready to witness pure, unadulterated visual cringe.

Here are multiple Amazon™ brands just naturally responding to another brand, as brands tend to do. Brands, they’re just like us. Good to see people could take time off from pearl clutching about how evil Amazon™ is to give free promotion to their creepy digital assistant who eavesdrops on your conversations and snitches to the government:

You goofballs are irate over drivers peeing in bottles, but this is a non-issue? We truly have our priorities in order here.

Here we have two of my favorite fast food restaurants advertising under the Twitter™ tweet. I like Burger King™ fries, but Cambridge University™ definitely has the better milkshakes.

Hey guys, are you bored? What with Facebook™ being down and all. Well you’re in luck because instead of going outside and getting some fresh air, you can order a pizza from Domino’s™ (only the UK one) or download some shitty mobile games off Google™ to pass the time. Hell, why not just do both.

This is where it gets a little weirder. Metallica is just yelling like a little kid hopped up on Mountain Dew Baja Blast™ , but what’s that on the left? Did anyone else not know that KFC Gaming™ was an actual entity? Evidently it’s not a parody account and KFC actually has a console in development:

What, I say what in tarnation? A console that warms my KFC™ brand official gamer chicken? Hell yeah, brother. A little chicken grease dripping in my gaming console can’t possible create any issues. Hell, make the console liquid chicken-grease cooled.

Sportsball™ chimed in with a generic “how bout that game” response, because what else would they have to add to this discussion. Meanwhile, Pizza Hut™ completely missed the point of the original post and replied like the topic was Garfield comics.

Twitter™ : “Hey guys, our site is still up and running, while our competitor is having technical issues.”
Pizza Hut™ : “I’m gonna eat your lasagna and sit on your newspaper while you’re reading it 😂”.
Very cool Pizza Hut™ . Thanks for that.

The bean water companies weren’t going to be left out. Starbucks™ decided to just shill their overpriced caffeine juice, while Tim Hortons™ went completely off-topic, because evidently they’ve been hanging out with Pizza Hut™ a little too much.

Next up, we have Uno™, who have a Twitter™ account for some reason. I haven’t even heard of anybody playing Uno™ since like 1993. What other obscure games have Twitter™ accounts? Is Yahtzee™ on that site? How about Parcheesi™? Does Mouse Trap™ have an account so I can keep up-to-date with all the latest important Mouse Trap™ developments? Then Warner Bros™ chimes in with the most half-assed response imaginable.

Lastly, we have Zoom™ . They make a clever screen joke, because what else are they really gonna add to this discussion? It’s just Zoom™.

That’s all the brand responses I saved, even though there were dozens more. No brand would be caught dead missing the opportunity to advertise their shit below a viral tweet that got 3 million likes. People proceeded to “like” these blatant advertisements by the tens of thousands because people are suckers for being advertised to in a relatable way it seems.

All these accounts exist merely to advertise on Twitter™. That is their only purpose. They hit you with the ads on television, they hit you with the ads in magazines, they even hit you with the ads on YouTube™ and Twitch™. You’re crazy if you think they’re gonna miss out on the opportunity to advertise to you on Twitter™ as well. Yet people like this kind of thing instead of simply ignoring it, like they probably should.

I can’t wait for the future of advertising, wherein you’ll arrive back at your place after work, and McDonald’s™ welcomes you home right before telling you about the new McLobster Milkshake. This won’t phase you of course, because ads are everywhere. They’re everywhere because you insisted on inviting the brands into your home at every opportunity. You even rewarded the brands by “liking” all of their horseshit. This dystopia is your doing, so enjoy it.

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Trumps Greatest Hits: Volume 5

In honor of Joe Biden becoming the 46th President™ of the United States, I’m going to publish some of Donald Julio Trump’s greatest/worst tweets. I would post some of Biden’s greatest tweets, but he literally has no good tweets. His account just consists of empty platitudes that some unpaid intern tweets out on his behalf in order to meet a Tweet Quota™. This is the case with all former U.S. presidents, except Trump, whose twitter feed was an absolute train wreck until he was banned.

I archived a lot of his greatest hits throughout the last few years, so here are a few of the most ridiculous and/or entertaining ones. Let’s start with some old school bangers, circa 2011-2013:

It always amazed me when liberal wine aunts were aghast when Trump said ridiculous or mean things while he was in office. It’s like, yeah, most people who voted for him were perfectly aware of that. Just because you couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to who was running in your own elections doesn’t mean the rest of society didn’t either. Being a douche was a part of his whole brand. It was a selling point for a lot of people.

He also had a sense of humor, albeit brash, that was constantly downplayed by his most hysterical of detractors, assumedly because they couldn’t bring themselves to humanize him in any way. There were numerous running jokes that he kept going, including these wig tweets:

He even did a whole series of holiday-themed ‘haters and losers” tweets, which I personally found funny. I like the commitment it takes keep a stupid joke running for years. I too enjoy keeping jokes™ going for way too long.

Here he is quote tweeting and agreeing with himself like a normal person would do:

Here he is not understanding how global warming and/or weather works:

Here he is beefing with Nancy Pelosi:

And here he is ragging on Elizabeth Warren:

He apparently wasn’t a big fan of Don Lemon or John Bolton:

Here’s a few more random hate-tweets:

A few rare instances of Trump being humble:

Trump gracefully accepting the 2016 election results:

And finally, the “schlonged” tweet:

You will be missed on twitter, sweet orange Prince. Now nobody will know your varied and nuanced opinions on topics such as Don Lemon and various soft drinks. Twitter just became a darker place. RIP.

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The Orange Man and Tech Censorship

Guess who just got unpersoned on the internet? No, not Smash Mouth™. Nope, not that short dude with no neck from that reality show. Definitely not Scott Bakula either. Give up? This guy:

The oligarchy of U.S. tech companies met up in their secret bunker and decided to give ole’ Trumpy the boot. Sorry big guy. No more beefing with celebrities and calling your political opponents dumb losers for the time being.

Some people are big mad at Trump being exiled, while some are ecstatic. Most seem to be a bit delusional as to the actual reason he was given the boot. Tech companies always give some bullshit explanation about “T.O.S. (Term of Service) violations”, but this isn’t the reality of the situation.

Here it is:

Yeah.. no. No, they didn’t ban Trump to “save democracy”, but it’s absolutely adorable that you actually think that. You probably believe in witchcraft too, so I’m not gonna hold you to too high of a standard here “moonmagic66”.

This isn’t about safety or Terms of Service violations. It’s not about saving anything other than the company itself. It’s about P.R. and corporate optics. It’s bad P.R. for these sites to not ban Trump. Not getting rid of him would lead to them getting hurt the only place it matters to them. Their wallets.

Peep this Jpeg:

Now how exactly are Pinterest™ and TikTok™ saving democracy by banning Trump? Was he going to upload a quiche recipe and film a K-Pop dance video? How about Spotify™? Are they preventing Trump from dropping a hot new mixtape? He doesn’t even use any of those platforms. None of them mattered. These are just empty gestures.

These companies don’t do things like banning high profile people out of some sort of virtuous gesture. They do so to stave off bad P.R. The middle-aged housewives who use Pinterest™ to post eleventy billion photos of their cats aren’t going to stage a mutiny against the company now. “Yay! My favorite social media platform banned someone who probably wasn’t even aware it existed! Democracy is saved!”.

The only two platforms the fella used on that list are Facebook™ and Twitter™. I’ve never seen his Facebook™ page, and it looks like I’ll never get to now, but I’m assured that it did in fact exist. I wonder if he used it to post any dank memes. His Twitter™ account is for sure gone though.

Ah, yes. Look there. It appears that Trump violated the “Twitter Rules™”, whatever those actually are. Unfortunately not even Twitter™ knows what their own damn rules are. Seriously. Twitter™ is an absolute shit-hole of a site, and I’m not being facetious either. I’m on it all the time to research these posts and I need to take a shower afterwards. Here’s a list of things you can find on Twitter™ at this very moment that somehow don’t violate their arbitrary and barely enforced “Twitter Rules™”:

– Child Porn
– Death Threats
– Virulent Homophobia
– Pro-Genocide Propaganda
– Blatant Racism
– And Many Other Hits!

Yes, child porn. When I first heard the rumblings that there was a bit of a child porn problem on Twitter™, I initially though it was hyperbole, or some conspiracy theory. But alas, there are so many accounts peddling the stuff that people have started accounts whose sole purpose is to highlight the offending accounts so their followers can mass report them. These illicit accounts continue to stay up until enough people complain and Twitter™ finally deletes them, only for more to immediately pop up. Great system you got there, Twitter™

this account was eventually banned

Let’s also tackle the pro-genocide propaganda, shall we? That certainly sounds like something that should be in violation of the “Twitter Rules™”.

You read that right. A Chinese government account pushing propaganda that a “study” was done showing Uygur women were actually happier now that they’ve had their state-sanctioned sterilization. The “eradicating extremism” alludes to where the government rounded up all the Muslims and put them into re-education camps to make them less Muslim-y. Soon they’ll be way less Muslim-y, because they can’t reproduce. And Twitter™ apparently had no problem with this content.

That is, until enough people complained and the post was removed. The account is still there posting all kinds of delicious propaganda, but that single post was removed. This only happened because enough people reported it, not because Twitter™ saw a problem with it to begin with. Do you see how this whole “it’s a P.R. thing, not T.O.S. thing” works?

People have been complaining to Twitter™ to ban Trump for the better part of the last four years. There were petitions and all those other pointless trivialities people like to sign because they think that’s how the world works. Dude’s been violating their T.O.S. constantly for the last four years. Was the 67th time the one that finally did it?

If he had ended up winning a second term, you can bet your sweet cheeks there’s no chance he would have been banned. He was entirely too good for engagement on their platform. None of that really matters now, because he was down to his last 2 weeks in office. Twitter™ really has nothing to lose at this point.

I know it must come as a shock that corporations do things for personal benefit and not for the greater good. This next revelation will probably come as a shock too, so you might want to sit down. Ok… you know how all those companies change their logos for pride month? That’s just a P.R. move too. Can you believe it?

Same as when they black out their social media over a death. It’s purely performative. Do you honestly think Nike™ cares if a black dude gets shot by the police? Nike™ doesn’t even care enough about human life to not use kids as slave labor. If you do happen to have a reputation for using slave labor, it’s certainly good P.R. to hop on the latest social cause band wagons though. Unfortunately this tactic seems to actually work.

Hey there Black Community. Times got ya down? Don’t worry, *checks notes* Gushers™ brand fruity childhood diabetes fruit snacks has your back. What exactly they’ve done beyond virtue signalling to earn empty likes and grow their social media presence is anyone’s guess. But at least they’ve put in the minimal amount of effort possible to acknowledge a problem, and that’s what really counts.

it’s not just 3rd tier childhood fruit snacks getting in on the action. The Banks™ and Oil™ companies are all in on the action now too.

Good to see that you guys could take time off foreclosing on people’s houses and dumping oil on baby seal’s faces to make a statement about something that doesn’t affect you. Regardless of who ends up in the White House, you’re just going to bribe them to be allowed to continue doing shitty things anyway, but thank you for the sentiment. I’ll sleep safer tonight knowing that the Banks™ continue to be a voice of morality in our society.

This trend where corporations create twitter accounts to try to meme and get political is so embarrassing. Just sell me your cancer and stop trying to be relatable. We all know what you’re here for, and it isn’t to make a change, or join the discourse.

Ben and Jerry’s™ ice cream is consistently one of the worst cases of this. They type out 9-page political diatribes every time something in U.S. politics happens. At this point, they’re essentially just a political account that occasionally tweets out something about their actual products. They post these feel-good, boilerplate statements so that their pre-diabetic Northeastern housewife audience can pat themselves on the back for being “progressive” while gorging down another pint of I’m With Her Kale Quinoa Explosion.

The two guys who founded the company literally have nothing to do with it anymore. Unilever™ has owned it since 2000, and has actively gone out of their way to keep the whole “socially conscience” vibe going, despite Unilever being about as socially conscience as Exxon. The account is probably run by someone in a marketing department in Malaysia somewhere. The housewives don’t need to know this though. Just keep shoveling ice cream in their direction.

At least Steak-Umm™ is honest about it’s intentions:

So maybe stop attributing political benevolence to what corporations do. They literally don’t care until they are forced to for some reason, and that reason is usually monetary. Tech corporations shouldn’t be applauded for blatantly ignoring their own T.O.S., even if they occasionally make a good call in banning someone. They’re corporations, not people, and should be held accountable and held to some sort of standard in how they operate.

Most importantly, why is nobody concerned about this:

Twitter™ and Facebook™ just tanked an entire grifter industry. These people have bills to pay and mouths to feed. Now they’re going to have to go get real jobs, and that is an injustice. Won’t somebody think of these fine folks? The least Twitter™ could do is create a TrumpBot that procedurally generates Trump tweets so these people can continue tweeting hysterically in the mentions and selling #resist shirts to conspiratorial soccer moms. It’s the least they could do.

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The Legality of Echo Chambers

A few days ago Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a lawsuit filed against her by Joey Saladino. Mr. Saladino is of course better known as “Joey Salads” of staged youtube pranks fame. He’s produced such hits as: “PUNCHING FRIENDS FOR MONEY *prank*”, “N-WORD PRANK (GONE WRONG), and perennial favorite “ABDUCTING CHILD IN FRONT OF DAD (Social Experiment)”.

The lawsuit was filed due to Mr. Saladino being blocked by Ocasio-Cortez on twitter. I can’t find exactly what it is he tweeted that resulted in his block, but ultimately it doesn’t matter, as Ocasio-Cortez is legally in the wrong here regardless. She could have used twitter’s mute function, but blocking other users from seeing her tweets is currently illegal, as per the recent ruling against Donald Trump.

From a New York times article dated July 9th, 2019: The First Amendment prohibits an official who uses a social media account for government purposes from excluding people from an “otherwise open online dialogue” because they say things that the official finds objectionable, Judge Parker wrote.

What this means, is that since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez uses her @AOC account to discuss government matters, she cannot block people from that account. She also has an account (@RepAOC) that seems to serve as more of an “official account”, yet that one has a mere 45 tweets posted as of this writing, whereas her primary account has tweeted 8510 times. Perhaps she figured that only her “official” account was beholden to these rules, but Trump also has a primary account and an official account (@realDonaldTrump and @POTUS), and the ruling barred him from blocking people on either.

I think part of the bigger problem here is that the U.S. is electing a few too many insecure narcissists, who end up treating their government positions more as beneficial social-media venues than an actual jobs. They’re more interested in amassing likes and engaging in “clap-backs” than actually accomplishing anything of substance with the positions they were elected into.

This narcissism tends to involve getting rid of anyone who might criticize them in a public forum, potentially making them look bad. If you’ve effectively blocked everyone who disagrees with you, and only keep the people around who shower you with praise, you develop this erroneous delusion that everything you say is “right” and that everyone agrees with you. This is effectively what happens in communist regimes and dictatorships. If you send everyone to the gulags who opposes you, soon enough you’re left surrounded by only people who agree with you and “adore” you. This is why we have the First Amendment in the U.S. No government official or leader should be above criticism.

Another part of the problem is that prior to social media, government officials tended to just mind their business, and actually do their jobs. It was rare for the populace to know much about members of the House or Senate, other than those who represented their own state or region. Now, every member is trying to become a social media star, and with that, we are now privy to the less savory sides of these people. Politicians getting into pointless arguments, saying generally stupid things, and supporting terrible causes for social brownie points have all become the norm.

Trump and Ocasio-Cortez are two of the worst on twitter, so it comes as no surprise that they receive the most blow-back and end up blocking people in fits of thin-skinned rage. Between Trump’s constant name-calling and mud-slinging at people he dislikes, and Ocasio-Cortez’s incessant back-and-forths with people who so much as question the inaccuracies she regularly spews, it’s quite the shit-show. I have a folder on my computer that I screenshot and save dumb tweets to, and Trump and Ocasio-Cortez are by far the MVPs of said folder. They should star in a buddy cop film together.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this lawsuit and all the copycat lawsuits that inevitably happen in its wake. There’s quite a few other members of Congress who are guilty of having a heavy ban finger on social media. Politicians are probably going to have to start learning how to use that mute button.

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Things I Would Post On Twitter™ If I U..s….., . .

What’s up person(s) who are potentially reading this right now.  I gotta come clean with you.  You know all those times when I published posts about how I don’t use twitter™ because it’s dumb and only dummy dumb dumbs use it?  Well…  I hope you can forgive me.  You see…  I signed up for twitter™ just the other day.  I know, I know.  Social media is stupid I said.  And twitter™ is just for narcissists who want to spam the internet with poorly written sentences that look like Prince wrote them, if Prince had Parkinson’s Disease.

It’s not like that though.  Well…  it’s mostly like that.  But there are a lot of creative and interesting posts and conversations going on if you know where to look.  I found myself visiting the site quite often to catch up on the daily scribblings of a few writers and pundits whom I enjoy.  But the thing was… I wasn’t able to click that cute little heart button to show my approval of a tweet™ I enjoyed.  So as you can understand, I had no choice but to hand over all of my personal information and get an account.  There was no other way.  I hope you understand.

But guess what?  It’s yet another outlet for me to post pointless, juvenile drivel on now.  Only I don’t have to put all the effort into constructing a whole bunch of paragraphs in one sitting.  I can just bust out dick jokes and one liners on twitter™, because that’s what you do on twitter™.  That and get into stupid arguments.  So if you’re reading this, feel free to add me.  My name on twitter™ is “Meat Goblet” (@MeatGoblet).  You probably could have guessed that though.  So drop on by, call me a faggot, and try to get me banned.  It’ll be a swell ole time!  Peace out, friend!

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Things I Would Post On Twitter If I Used Twitter #9

I gonna be honest with you.  I don’t really feel like finishing up any of the 34 partially written posts that I have sitting around on wordpress.  However, I still feel like I should probably post something for those two people in Uganda who have my site bookmarked, so I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do.  I’m going to bust out a half-ass filler post until I get off my dumper and finish something more substantial.  That’s right!  It’s time for more blurbs of genius (debatable perhaps) that I would have just posted on Twitter, if I were narcissistic or famous enough to have actually signed up for Twitter.  Feel free to read these clever zingers and then wallow in a stew of your own envy and admiration.  You’re welcome!

 

1)  After Sting dies, I wonder if it will be more appropriate to refer to him as Stang, or Stung.

2)  I’m going to release my first Christian rock album next week.  It’s called “Frosted Tips and Soul Patches”.

3)  There’s a deluxe version of the new Nickelback album. It emits carbon monoxide when opened, so that you don’t have to listen to Nickelback.

4)  The other day I wanted to find out what a “Crip Walk” was, so I grabbed a copy of Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia.

5)  You ever been inside one of those Starbucks places?  It’s so white in there, I’m surprised there aren’t Klan meetings in progress.

6)  When someone asks me for the time, I ask “Do you have a cell phone? Well it’s time for you to stop being a lazy twat and check your phone.”

7)  An Open Letter To People Who Write Open Letters:  Please stop it.  Nobody likes uptight, passive aggressive people.  Sincerely, Everybody.

8)  Spelling bees should all be renamed: “Autistic Kids With Overbearing Parents Spell Things Awkwardly”

9)  If Ray Charles was such a genius, how come he never learned how to see?  Even babies can do that.

10)  It’s ironic that people who use terms like “trigger warning” are the people I most wish would get shot in the face.

#TriggerWarning   #NotAllPosts

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Things I Would Post On Twitter If I Used Twitter #7

*CLONK* *CLONK*

Does anybody else hear that?

*CLONK* *CLONK* *CLONK*

Shhh…  listen real closely.

*CLONKCLONKCLONKCLONK*

I know exactly what that sound is.  A dead horse being ruthlessly beaten once again.  The flogging of a deceased farm animal can mean one thing, and one thing only.  Time for a filler post!  WHEEEEE!   Let’s get this over with and move on with our lives.

 

1)  Fun Fact: The Brits are completely unaware that there is a “c” in the word “schedule”.  The more you know.  (rainbow star)

2)  I’m working on a new idea for a sitcom.  It involves a white supremacist couple living together in New York.  It’s called “Mad About Jews”.

3)  I can tell one of my neighbors has OCD, because I hear their car honk at least a dozen times before they finally enter their house.

4)  I wonder if Kim Jong-un refers to his mom as “Mahjong”

5)  If Jesus had ever said “YOLO!”, it sure would have been ironic.

6)  My internet went out for 3 hours yesterday.  I now know what it’s like to live in a third world country.

7)  Listening to inspirational music only inspires me to get up and put something on that isn’t terrible.

8)  If I was a female rapper, I’d probably perform under the alias “Aunt Flow”.

9)  Fun Fact: The Brits are completely unaware that there is no “r” in the word “idea”.  The more you know. (rainbow star)

10)  I like to play a game called: Did this person talking close to my face just drink coffee, or eat a bowl of goblin turds.

#EnoughAlready  #PleaseMakeItStop