279. Lost opportunities

As Donald Trump was finally permanently banned by Twitter, after four years of testing the boundaries with the gusto of a rebellious teenager with over-permissive parents, a parody profile appeared with his photo on the handle, tweeting what the owner of the profile, in satiric tone, imagined an out of work Trump may be tweeting. Within one hour, the profile had over 7,000 followers and 66,000 retweets. Comedy is good, it can even be a tool for sanity and survival in these crazy times, but the fact that all it took was this imaginative impersonation to gain more followers than those accumulated over years of effort by people and organisations with serious, worthwhile messages and stories of import to tell reminds us of the opportunities we are losing with social media. They could be a forum for real debate, democratic engagement, information or even education, but the substance is completely lost in the cacophony of inconsequential nonsense that many, in their escapism, seem to prefer 

Length: 1,000 characters

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

149. It's all about the bike

28. Patience is one of the differences between life science and property development

34. The 'Todos tus libros' platform