Twitter Feeds You Democrats

Twitter loves Jerry Brown. But does Jerry Brown love Twitter?

The Associated Press reports that Twitter, which is apparently still the social media rage, is inspiring Republican rage in here in California.  Seems that when you sign up for the service — which, like Muzak in an elevator, is designed to help stamp out any brief time for actual coherent, trivia-free reflection in your waking life — it suggests a horde of quasi-famous or semi-interesting people you don't know, whose one-sentence proclamations you might want to never, ever miss.

And in California, it suggests Democratic political candidates. Only Democrats. Sayeth the AP:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is on the suggested user list and has 1.2 million followers. His likely opponent for the Democratic nomination, Attorney General Jerry Brown, also made the list and has 960,000 followers, even though he is not a declared candidate and has posted the fewest tweets of all the gubernatorial hopefuls. None of the three Republican candidates is on the list, and each has fewer than 5,000 followers.

Wait — Jerry Brown has the most verbal restraint?

Twitter's political monkeyplay is all fun and games, until that Glenn Beck guy gets ahold of it, fakes some righteous indignation and fear ("I am terrified about where this will go next," he'll say. "They're gonna force us to read the Huffington Post's RSS feed, and then They'll euthanize our grandmothers!"), and turns millions of paleo-Americans into frothing anti-Twitter crusaders, hell-bent on the destruction of the near-ubiquitous networking site and ... um ...

Never mind.  Carry on with your cheap, flagrant (and terrifying!) partisanship, Twitter.  Go, you!

— Brian McDonough

Comments

[Jenkins]

So, Twitter wants to be a legitimate means of disseminating information (when it finds that suitable), but when it does something ridiculous like this, it's all just "fun and games?"

[Brian McDonough]

Well, I meant the "fun & games" humorously, y'know, but in case that was less obvious outside my head than in (there should be an official Irony font. Something everyone has but no one uses too much, like Tahoma or something), there are the parts where I call it "political monkeywork" and "cheap, flagrant partisanship." Oh, and where I root for its utter destruction as an online presence. Rest assured, Jenkins, ain't no one trying to make Twitter look good here ...

But while we're making giant leaps ... Legitimate? Twitter?