TWEETS FROM THE UNDERGROUND: To get a sense of how social media shapes — and sometimes upends society, note the progression of this story involving superstar actor Will Smith. Yesterday, at Ricochet,  Bethany Mandel noted that “The Woke Always Eat Their Own,” linking to an item that was promoted to the top of Twitter by their management concerning SJWs grousing about Smith being cast to play Serena and Venus Williams’ father in an upcoming biopic, because “some people [were] questioning the decision for Smith to play a darker-skinned man.” As Mandel adds:

When you click on the story, the objections appear to just be from a handful accounts, and none of them notable. That hasn’t stopped Twitter from elevating their complaints to the mainstream, granting them undeserved legitimacy.

The purpose is for clicks, for engagement, for conversation on Twitter about the topic. It’s their business model, and you can’t fault them for trying to initiate a conversation. The problem is, Twitter (and its ultra-liberal Silicon Valley engineers) are willing to let the enemy of the good be the enemy of the perfect; stoking race wars within the black community in order to do it.

Twitter is the spawning place for lots of what Mickey Kaus calls “the undernews,” much of which never is touched by the MSM. But how quickly did this non-story emerge from the undernews to the overculture? This fast, as spotted by Power Line’s Steve Hayward today:

You might think this was limited to the crazed Twitterati, but in fact the “controversy” made it to the BBC, which demonstrates once again the “Beebs” atrocious news judgment:

Will Smith ‘casting as Richard Williams’ sparks colourism debate

Richard Williams, 77, coached his daughters to become two of the world’s greatest tennis players, despite having no previous experience of the game.

But Smith’s reported casting in the film has angered critics, who say he is too light-skinned for the part. Colourism is a form of discrimination against dark-skinned people in favour of those with lighter skin from the same race.

“As someone pointed out in the aftermath of Jussie Smollett hoax,” Hayward writes, “the demand for racism now exceeds the supply, so we have to resort to made-up racism to satisfy the demand for leftists to feel outraged and indignant.”

Obviously though, there’s a simple solution to this dust-up. There’s only person qualified to play the pater familias of the Williams family: Scarlett Johansson.