The
upsurge in news-by-crisis has caused Twitter, the primary weapon in
the digital news-by-crisis armoury, to explode from 140 characters
per tweet to a massive 280 characters per tweet. This doubling in
size is caused by the over consumption of crises that now prevails in
news, both fake
and non-fake.
The first instances of the
obesitised version of a Twitter storm, now upgraded to a Twitter
Hurricane, to reflect the recent aggrandisement, have been named
Twitter Hurricane Weinstein, (THW) and Twitter Hurricane Spacey,
(THS). In both instances, the centres of the hurricanes, Weinstein
and Spacey, have asserted they will ‘seek treatment for’ or ‘look
at’ their behaviour, which is not much use to their victims, but it
does let justice systems and police off the hook. More tweeting is
expected, well up to the 280 character limit.
Despite their being no
government in Northern Ireland, the new obese twitter activity
continues unabated with a gale of hot air emanating from the Twitter
community adding to the heat coming from the Renewable Heat Incentive
(RHI) enquiry. RHI was a corrupt government licence to burn public
money, given out under cover of a scheme to shift businesses, who
could afford it, to renewable energy consumption. It may also have
served to buy votes and influence. The enquiry stuttered into flame,
with non-Twitter users – the vast majority of the world’s
population – wondering what all the fuss was about, exclaiming to
each other directly: “Tell us something we don’t know.”
Salvation may be on hand for
the newly obese Twitter with the announcement that the President of
Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams is to step down from his day job to devote
more time to his tweeting, an activity at which he is particularly
avid. The Twitter community await with bated breath. The rest of the
world’s population just carry on breathing, as best they can.
Immediately following the
announcement by Twitter, two UK government ministers left the Cabinet
run by Frida Kahlo fan and Prime Minister, Teresa May. Michael
Fallon, former Defence Secretary and keen advocate of selling fighter
jet bombers to the already oversupplied regime in Saudi Arabia, left
the Cabinet in the face of a variety of allegations of sexual
harassment, summed up, with tongue firmly in cheek, by one female
Westminster staffer, who described Michael Fallon as 'dodgy in a
taxi'. And more.
Another minister, Priti Patel,
resigned from the Cabinet because she blurred the line between work
and holidays and didn't tell her bosses. Or perhaps she did and the
problem was that more people found out. Or that she didn't tell them
enough and when a second 'show and tell' session was required, she
was forced to resign. Twitter, well, binged.
Further pressures on Twitter’s
girth, causing it to expand two-fold, came from the ironically-named
Paradise Papers, which showed that prime-time tv comedy actors, a
racing car driver, a sovereign and her family, a football club owner,
among others, aided and abetted by well-paid accountants, bankers and
lawyers, were moving their cash assets (money, to the non-rich)
internationally to evade and avoid paying taxes in their countries of
residence. Some of the people named in the TV programme that
investigated the papers are so rich that they didn’t know that this
was happening, like you put your hand in your pocket and find a coin
and exclaim “Wow! I didn’t know I had that.” And then you tweet
about it.
Twitterphiles were
disappointed to hear that, obese or otherwise, the Pontiff in Rome is
not having any tweeting going on at Mass. Questions of solemnity and
attention to a divine ritual were raised, though habitual mass-going
tweeters cite their ability to be humourless multi-taskers as an
adequate response to the Pontiff’s anger. He is reported to be
considering a tweet in response, but Twitter may need another boost
in character-numbers to cope with his ire. God has not yet tweeted in
response, thus far, though the Twitterati are confident s/he will.
Lead-Twitterer in the world,
the US President, eased back on tweeting recently, reportedly because
he is not sure he has the vocabulary for 280 characters. Those
reports were blasted – where else?- on Twitter by observers of the
US President’s visit to China. They noted that the US President
couldn’t be expected to maintain his usual level of tweeting with
lavish entertainment, banquets and military displays so occupying
him. Tweets by other people confirmed that the US President couldn’t
rise to a 280 character tweet while consuming weaponry-laden
spectacles, accompanied by extravagant buffets of jiaozi and bakpau.
“Tell us something we don’t
know” is the widely felt and sometimes expressed reaction to all
tweeting, slim and non-slim, be it in the worlds of politics,
finances or the widespread field of older men harassing younger women
and men, sexually and otherwise.
The old dramatist’s saw
applies: show, don’t tell,
now amended to: show, don’t
tweet. (Check: 15 characters?)
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