Monday
Ever since rightwing billionaire Elon Musk purchased Twitter, the social media site has been abuzz—or a-twitter—about the possible end of the posting service as we know it. Chaucer Doth Tweet, which I wrote about Thursday, reposted some of its bests tweets, as though that they were headed for oblivion. Twitter savvy Tobias Wilson-Bates, meanwhile, riffed on Hamlet’s eulogy to court jester Yorick:
Toby’s tweet is positively Joycean. To appreciate it, here’s the original passage:
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times. And now how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss’d I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning?
And now to the tweet, which alludes to David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest:
Alas, poor Twitter! I knew it well, Ho-Ratio: some fellows reading infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at it. Here hung those bits that I have RT’ed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now?
For those not versed in twitter language, a tweet is ratioed if the number of negative responses it gets far outweigh the positive responses. RT, meanwhile, stands for retweet, which one often does if one likes it and looks forward to encourage witty gibes in return.
Another Twitter lament, along with a great thread, comes to us courtesy of “Jane Austen First Drafts” (JAFD), who informs us in her bio that “If Lady Catherine had ever learnt to tweet, she would have been a great proficient.” Her initial response to Musk’s takeover referenced Mansfield Park:
Let’s enjoy the last few moments we have on here before it’s totally ruined, like we’re rehearsing Lovers’ Vows before Sir Thomas crashes the party.
A reader responded, “It’s like knowing Mr. Collins will inherit Longbourn and we’re the unmarried ladies looking for any other eligible man,” to which JAFD answered,
We aren’t laughing at Mrs. Bennet anymore!
Someone else tweeted, It’s like General Tilney’s carriage suddenly rolling up to Northanger at 11pm.
But the winner came from a reader who referenced Sense and Sensibility. JAFD observed, “This is so accurate it hurts”:
Fanny Dashwood is on her way to take possession
Let’s see, who is more hateful—Fanny Dashwood, who selfishly talks her husband out of money for his stepmother and half-sisters (per his father’s dying request), or Elon Musk, who flirts with Putin and Trump? Oof, that’s a hard one.
And there’s more: Shakepeare, meanwhile, showed up in another tweet:
“First thing we do is kill all the lawyers” Henry VI [Part 2] – Elon Musk’s first firings: top legal executive & general counsel – remember the real meaning of those lines is that in order to sow chaos – you first get rid of the lawyers.
To explain the chaos Shakespeare feared, here’s Judge Tom Thrash explaining the context for the statement in a guest essay he contributed to this site:
Henry VI, Part 2, is set in England in the late 15th century at the beginning of the Wars of the Roses. Henry VI is a weak and ineffectual king, and the nobles and great lords rule the country. England is in turmoil, with a charlatan named Jack Cade leading an armed mob of angry tenant farmers and tradesmen in a march on London with the aim of overthrowing the ruling elites and all of England’s legal and governmental institutions.
The statement about killing all the lawyers is made by Dick the Butcher, one of the leaders of the mob of anarchists. He wants to get rid of the lawyers because they are the defenders of the rule of law. Lawyers are defenders of a system of justice that curtails the arbitrary use of force. To me, recognizing our special role as defenders of the rule of law is an important aspect of professionalism.
In other words, get rid of Twitter lawyers–include the one who banned Donald Trump from the site–and it will be overrun by fascists and racists.
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot has also weighed in, this time from a tweeter who goes by the twitter handle “Nemanja”:
VLADIMIR: “Well? Shall we leave Twitter?”
ESTRAGON: “Yes, let’s go.”
(They do not move.)