Progressives have a Twitter problem

Sometimes, social media simply shine a light on who an individual was all along. Until Lawrence Tribe signed up for a Twitter account, most Americans had every reason to think of him as a normal person; it took a window into his every thought to show them they were wrong. In other cases, the incentives that Twitter provides can reveal just how solipsistic, dogmatic, or out of touch a given figure truly is. This problem can best be summed up by the irritating phrase, “If you’re taking flack, you must be over the target,” and it tends to affect people who cannot grasp that they — rather than the amorphous glob of enemies they perceive — are the ones who have said something dumb. We’ve all seen this happen. A prominent Twitter user will say something abhorrent, and, having been called out for it, will respond to the criticism first by complaining that “the right-wing trolls found this one” and then by lamenting that the comment has engendered a great deal of attention, some of which was “hateful.” Rarely if ever will the user in question realize that he is actually in the wrong.

This problem obtains at a broader level, too. Joe Biden won the 2020 election in large part because he recognized that Twitter was not real life; Joe Biden is enduring a failed presidency in large part because he has forgotten that Twitter is not real life. It is difficult to overstate just how weird and unrepresentative a place Twitter actually is — and yet, inexplicably, President Good Ol’ Joe and his merry team seem to be laser-focused on its users’ every whim. The obsession with student loans is pure Twitter, as are the relentless focus on transgenderism and race-essentialism, the preference for neologisms such as “Latinx” and “birthing people,” and the belief that anyone who matters is going to notice when the White House pulls stunts such as this one. “Defund the Police” was a Twitter thing. “Jim Crow 2.0” was a Twitter thing. “Mint the coin” was a Twitter thing. They all led to electoral annihilation.