Twitter: Where Windows Go Bye Bye
One Tweet Sums Up My Beef with the X
Recently I told a friend that I no longer use Twitter and he, not being a user, asked me what was really wrong with it—beyond what he had read in the news. I hemmed and hawed about toxic discourse but I don't think I made myself very clear or added anything new. A few weeks later, I remembered this Tweet from last year.
https://twitter.com/neontaster/status/1552842832716644352
I wish I had thought of it at the time. It reads (in case Elon ever blocks links), "I have a spring loaded window smasher on my car keys and if I ever see a dog locked in a car, window go bye bye." The tweet links to The Original Emergency Keychain Car Escape Tool, 2-in-1 Seatbelt Cutter and Window Breaker, Made in USA.
Walking around with a hand-held window smasher in the off-chance you see a dog locked in a car: You will not find a better unintentional metaphor for the moral worldview of a prolific Tweeter.
So why is that dog in that car? Did someone run inside a nearby office for one minute to drop off a letter?
Context does not matter. A dog is in a locked car.
But wait, what do you do after you smash the window? What if the now-freaked-out dog runs away and has to live on the streets and eventually gets impressed into a dog-fighting ring? What if, gasp!, it runs into traffic? Wouldn't that be worse than what is probably only five minutes of panting?
Your ignorance of Twitter is clear and I am sad for you. Consequences do not matter either. The fate of the dogs who are freed and the people whose days are ruined are not your concern. Smash that window. After you do, brag about it. Then encourage others to smash windows too. I mean, click here: the Keychain Escape Tool is only $9.64, so why not help Free the Warm Dogs?
I, like most Americans, live in a car-and-dog-rich community. I notice lots of cars. I notice lots of dogs. I notice dogs inside cars too. Quite often, in fact. But rarely if ever do I notice dogs in cars all by themselves. So I am at a bit of a loss about how someone who, I assume, lives in a community similar to mine might have noticed it so frequently that he needs to add yet another thing to his keychain and to his, I also assume, already full pockets.
Well, maybe you aren't looking hard enough. This sad world is built on the backs of distressed puppies.
True, maybe I am not looking but I also think that is a virtue. I am not looking for dogs to save, windows to smash, causes to be the hero of. But prolific Twitter users are. That, in one Tweet, is Twitter: a place for outrage hobbyists to look for people who slip up to hurt.
I think Neontaster/Noam Blum is a relatively moderate example of a prolific Tweeter, and despite this insane tweet I kind of like him. I saw this tweet last year because I used to check his feed. He's one of the amusing anti-Trump conservatives worth reading to see what that type thinks, and I tend to agree with some of his Takes on culture in general. There are much more obnoxious prolific Tweeters than Blum, but he is representative of the type regardless of political ideology: sort of a rando, either not affiliated or barely affiliated with any media outlet, adept at the concise argument and clever summary, occasionally funny but never that funny, smart, confident, pugnacious, unsympathetic to those he opposes, and hard to imagine not holding a phone. If he ever has smashed a window to free a dog, which I doubt, it is hard to imagine his free hand not recording the event.
Like I said, there are worse Tweeters out there for sure, but I have not read their perfect, 26-word descriptions of their own anti-social moral crusading.