Twitter Quitter (Or, Xed Out)

Add a social media platform to one of the many things I've quit.  I've quit a lot of things, but never a social media platform.

When Twitter became X under Elon Musk's ownership, I shrugged it off.  I mostly used it to publish links to my blog anyway.  The operative word is "mostly"; once in while, I would make a comment on someone else's account.  If anyone, including the account owner, dislikes my comment and told me so, I'd either apologize and/or explain what I meant or let it run down my back.

But last week, I made a critical but innocuous comment to someone regarding a selfie this person had posted.   What was the comment?  I'd, umm, rather not say.  If I repeated it here, I might cause trouble for myself.  Which is exactly what I did on Twitter/X where I made the comment originally; responses to what I said ranged from angry to furious to catastrophically nasty.  I blocked some the accounts the incoming flak was coming from, but the person I made the original comment to was particularly angered by what I'd said and responded only to make an example of my apparent thoughtlessness despite usually ignoring such foolishness.  I apologized to this person and explained there was no malicious intent and decided to wait until I got a reply acknowledging and/or accepting my apology.  Then I would leave Twitter.  Instead, I got more angry comments from others.  I decided then not to wait for any acknowledgement of my apology, and I left Twitter immediately.

I joined Mastodon, a social media platform similar to Twitter but with far more safeguards against the sort of behavior seen on Twitter, as a substitute in order to keep promoting my blog, but I'm likely to use it less often because I'm continuing to hold back from blogging too often. (That includes my beautiful-women picture blog, which I post links to only on Facebook, because it seems less and less important to me as time passes.)  I'm moving away from most social media, because it's not only too tiring, it's, as Twitter proves nowadays, too dangerous.  At least Facebook allows me to connect with friends. 

When I had two blogs I promoted on Twitter, I wanted attention in the worst way.  And that's exactly what I got on Twitter last week.  And Elon Musk thinks it's a good thing when someone gets liberally and repeatedly excoriated for an inadvertently inappropriate comment about a selfie?  I'll pass, thanks.

Newt As Ronnie's Heir

Newt Gingrich is running for President of the United States.

Many people have long been sickened by the fact that a divorced and remarried man who talks up a game of family values, a man known for speaking optimistically of America one minute and taking cheap shots against political opponents the next, and making incendiary comments based on gross distortions of history, would seek America's highest office.

But Ronald Reagan was elected President anyway.

Surprise! No, I wasn't talking about Gingrich just now, but what has been said about him can easily be applied to our fortieth President. We all know that Reagan, a family values apostle who once complained that we can't talk to God in our schools anymore, divorced actress Jane Wyman. Some of us many even know that Nancy Reagan was already several weeks pregnant with her daughter Patti when she and Ronnie got married. But does anyone remember Reagan's nasty disparaging of the counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s when he was governor of California? He once spoke of seeing a hippie who "spoke like Tarzan, had long hair like Jane, and smelled like Cheetah." Seeing a group of demonstrators holding signs saying "Make Love, Not War," he turned to someone and said, "Those kids don't look capable of doing either."

Newt Gingrich likes to throw the word "fascist" around a lot. Well, it was the Reagan administration that once said that the New Deal and its proponents "espoused fascism." Newt likes to call opponents nasty names. Anyone remember what Reagan said about Michael Dukakis, when it looked like the son of Greek immigrants would succeed him in the White House, concerning a story that Dukakis had once seen a psychiatrist? "Look, I'm not going to pick on an invalid."

Witty. Witty.

So, there's actually a precedent for cynical nastiness - or nasty cynicism - in the Oval Office, even if Chris Matthews doesn't want to admit it.

And so, the notion of "President Gingrich" doesn't seem so preposterous.