Social Media Is The Problem?

Bret Stephens: these awful woke people hate satire and want to destroy it and they’ll come for you next

Also Bret Stephens: calling me a bedbug is like the Holocaust https://t.co/bK7R9Ppycx

— IncitementToResurrectionHat (@Popehat) February 24, 2021

My dude wrote this, with apparently zero self-reflection:

"No transgression of sensitivities is so trivial that it will not invite a moralizing rebuke on social media."

— Bard E. Qi (@shuffleknowsall) February 24, 2021

This line from Bret Stephens's latest "cancel culture is canceling everything" missive... I dunno, it just kind of bugs me. pic.twitter.com/aDXtobCUAU

— dave karpf (@davekarpf) February 23, 2021

You'll have to read the TechDirt article to get the gist of this story, but what it comes down to is that Dave Karpf used the name of Bret Stephens in a tweet about the New York Times, and Mr. Stephens took such umbrage at the louche use of his name in a tweet nobody else noticed (Mr. Karpf probably has more followers than I do, but not many more, I'm guessing) that he sent angry e-mails to Mr. Karpf and the provost of the college he teaches for.

But even that is small beer compared to Mr. Stephens using his platform as an Op-Ed columnist for the NYT to write about the incident.  Twice.  As TechDirt points out, it's the Streisand Effect plus Godwin's Law (yes, Nazis enter into it, via Mr. Stephens; and yes, Professor Karpf is Jewish) with some cancel culture thrown in for spice and because, isn't everything cancel culture now?  Except cancel culture is supposedly a fact of social media (it doesn't apply to CPAC?) and Godwin's Law is meant to apply to on-line discussions which are usually conducted like an argument on the school playground in about 3rd grade.  And Mr. Stephens took it to his megaphone on the pages of the New York Times.  Twice.

Because, you know, the real problem in the world is this new and potent thing called social media.  I mean, lorry nose, it's not people!