Yesterday on Twitter and Facebook, I posted the following. I thought nothing of it, I've linked to such stories regularly. And usually on Twitter I get somewhere between 5 and 50 "Likes" or retweets. (Facebook is much different, since responses there are limited to people who follow me. On Twitter, things can get retweeted endlessly and bounced around all over the place.)
While pointed, I thought it was pretty benign.
For reasons totally unexpected by me, this one made some people very angry on Twitter. I responded to a few, though not many. In part because I didn't care enough and had no interest in debating anyone so venal or snarky, but in part too because there were too many responses, and I just had zero interest reading through them all.
But -- On the other side of the coin, however many angry replies I got, they were paltry, overwhelmed by the tsunami of people who were pleased by the story. As I write this in the morning, about 12 hours after having posted that above-tweet, I have also now gotten more "Likes"...than there were expected attendees! So far, and the number keeps rising, there have been over 12,000 (!!) "Likes," and it has clogged up my Twitter feed. [UPDATE: Four hours later, it's now over 17,000, which is officially the most responses I've gotten to a tweet.] For what it's worth, I also (not surprisingly) have not responded to many of the notes where people have written positive comments. Just too many to read, of course. At first, I did reply to people who said that there's no way that's even 1,000 people. I explained that I was just quoting the newspaper article, and noted that there might be people in the balcony (if there was one), or behind the camera, or in the lobby -- and also that it's a two-day event, so maybe the 1,000 includes both days. But after a handful of writing those answers, I gave up with that, too. (Okay, a side note: I did see one snarky tweet scroll by this morning from a Trumper, and just had to respond to it. It was too perfect a set-up not to. What he wrote was, "Joe cant count to a thousand..let's go brandon." I wrote back -- "It's spelled 'can't.' And Brandon is capitalized. And there should be a comma after 'go.' You're welcome. Goodbye!" Seriously, there was no way I could let that slide...) By the way, for those keeping a record of such things, the previous biggest response I'd had to a tweet -- one that was near-unanimously positive -- was when I wrote about a young boy who had just spoken eloquently at last year's "virtual" Democratic Convention and reminded people he was the same kid who Joe Biden had met at a campaign event and offered to stay in touch with him to help with his stuttering. That tweet got over 16,000 "Likes" (and still gets some from time to time). As a related note, anyone replying to me on Twitter during the next day or so shouldn't expect a response since it will be buried in the avalanche... SECOND UPDATE: As of 11 PM tonight, the number of "Likes" now as gone up to 24,000.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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