The Friday Joke and a few (not so) sad home truths about social media

 I have to laugh at some of the rubbish I see on social media platforms, particularly X and Facebook. There is one local looney who has completely lost the plot. I think the poor chap lost his marbles being locked up during covid in his smelly flat above the pound shop. It has taken a toll. He posts dozens, if not hundreds of tweets a day, all full of rage and torment, aimed at everyone else who I suspect he blames for the fact that his life hasn't quite worked out the way he wanted. It is all the usual targets, who are all to blame for his predicament. He seems to have a strong empathy for Lucy Letby, claiming there has been a massive cover up and a miscarriage of justice (given what I know but can't publish about him, I can't say I'm surprised at the empathy with her). 

What is instructive is how many people are looking at his tweet. The average views is less than 30 and generally the only engagement he gets is when he retweets someome and they like it, please to find someone to share their blatherings. To try and give himself some sort of credibility a few years back, he engaged in a programme of getting spam followers, so he could claim to be the 'biggest account in Mill Hill' and his profile boasts of the millions of people who read his tosh. 

Occasionally, people will ask me what is going on. I tell them, best gnored, poor chap has lost his marbles. He is one of an army of keyboard warriors, merrily bashing nonsense out. As we all know, Twitter has over a third of billion users. I had a look at the most followed people on it.

Rank	Username	Owner	Followers (millions)	Description	Brand account
1	@elonmusk	Elon Musk	190.4	Business magnate and owner of X
2	@BarackObama	Barack Obama	131.7	44th President of the United States
3	@Cristiano	Cristiano Ronaldo	112.1	Football player
4	@justinbieber	Justin Bieber	110.5	Musician
5	@rihanna	Rihanna	108.1	Musician
6	@katyperry	Katy Perry	106.3	Musician
7	@narendramodi	Narendra Modi	100.3	14th Prime Minister of India
8	@taylorswift13	Taylor Swift	95.3	Musician
9	@realDonaldTrump	Donald Trump	87.6	45th President of the United States
10	@ladygaga	Lady Gaga	83.1	Musician and actress

I was rather surprised at some of these. It is interesting to see that Barack Obama has nearly twice as many followers as Donald Trump. The Indian president Narendra Modi is there and Twitter owner Elon Musk tops the list. I don't know whether to be surprised that Cristiano Ronaldo is third and the rest are a bevvy of pop stars. I suspect that to some extent, the likes of Justin Bieber being in there is because Twitter is last years thing. Justin Bieber who is fourth has not posted since 2022. Katy Perry's last tweet got 277K views and 6.8K likes. Elon Musk got 2.1 million views and 19k likes.  Of course these were justs snapshots. The last tweet from Barack Obama got 30 million views and 438K likes. Then again it was one of him endorsing Kamala Harris which was big news. 

The point is that even for massive world figures, often a tiny percentage of their followers actually see the tweets and even less bother to interact. If just over 1% of Elon Musks fans actually see his tweets, then what hope is there for the bedroom nutter keyboard warrior types. I am sure they fantasise about starting revolutions and that there are an army out their being rallied by their blatherings, but there isn't. There are just a few other bedroom warriors, cooped up in bedrooms above the chicken shop, basshing their keyboards. My own tweets generally get between 50 and 200 views. Occasionally, they get some traction. One I posted last week got 7.8K views. To be quite honest, I am not too bothered. It is nice when people like your work, read your blogs, listen to your music, but the truth is that Twitter has become a bit of an echo chamber where you never change anyones mind, because they only follow you if they like the stuff you post. So next time you see a dodgy post on Twitter, don't be too concerned. It is making some sad individual sitting in his bedroom, inhaling the fumes from the chip shop happy. 

And as it's friday, here's this weeks joke. Feeling rather cultured this week

#FridayJoke pic.twitter.com/KsVuTuhNAN

— Nova Cooks (@NovaCooks) June 28, 2024