Does anyone remember when social media was fun?
Ahhh, those were the days. I can remember when MySpace was all the rage, and everyone was going on it. There was a brief moment when something called Friendster was attracting attention, but ultimately, Facebook won the social media war. And it was actually kinda cool. A platform that allowed you to connect with your friends and family and see what was up. Heck, you could find old friends from college and high school on there and catch up on old times.
Over time, though, social media stopped being fun and became more political. People you thought were friends were calling you a bigot because you shared something that wasn’t sufficiently woke, and eventually, platforms we were all using regularly, like Facebook and Twitter, decided that they were going censor wrongthink.
So when the news broke that Elon Musk was buying Twitter to bring free speech back to the platform, it wasn’t a surprise that the political left went into a collective hissy fit and started threatening to leave Twitter. Curiously, in the days following the sale’s announcement, prominent liberals reported drops in their follower counts, while conservatives found their follower accounts increase.
Myself, I’m still banned. But, hopefully, I’ll be let back on soon.
While I’m sure many on the left who threatened to leave Twitter won’t, there were clearly plenty who did, and that is not shocking. As I’ve pointed out in the past, liberals are more likely to unfriend you on social media over politics, and they are increasingly embracing government and big tech censorship.
They actually see it as a source of pride. Angry liberals managed to get “Leaving Twitter” to trend … on Twitter! Why? Because Elon Musk has this insane idea that all points of view should be allowed on Twitter.
I know, crazy right?
What does this tell us about the left? You know, aside from the fact that they are the most intolerant people in the country, despite constantly professing their devotion to tolerance. Well, what this tells us is that these liberals fleeing Twitter—the same people who unfriend members of their family and their BFF from high school over a difference in political opinion—probably never belonged on social media in the first place and will always have a hard time functioning in society.
It’s a lot easier to self-segregate on social media. You can join groups on Facebook that are only for like-minded people, and you can block anyone you want on Twitter. But in real life, the world is full of people with varying opinions, and it’s actually quite difficult to limit your interactions to just people who think as you do. Oh, I don’t doubt there are people who try, and I’m sure they are the most miserable people you’ve ever met. To them, everything in life is a political act, and they won’t so much as buy a cup of coffee unless it was sourced sustainably by a transgender farmer who sold the beans to a black-owned coffee shop that donates a percentage of their profits to Planned Parenthood.
Social media gave these delicate snowflake liberals the false sense that they don’t have to function in a world full of opposing views.
For sure, these people will find some fascist platform that suits their needs for political conformity, but the truth is, they need to stay off the internet and learn to function with real people whom they can’t simply block or unfriend when they express an idea that they don’t like. Conservatives have long learned how to do this. Maybe Elon Musk can help usher in a new culture where social media may indeed bring us together rather than tear us apart.
