Celebrity Twitter Quotes

Celebrate who you are in your deepest heart. Love yourself and the world will love you.

Yeah, about the test... The test will measure whether you are an informed, engaged, and productive citizen of the world, and it will take place in schools and bars and hospitals and dorm rooms and in places of worship. You will be tested on first dates, in job interviews, while watching football, and while scrolling through your Twitter feed. The test will judge your ability to think about things other than celebrity marriages, whether you’ll be easily persuaded by empty political rhetoric, and whether you’ll be able to place your life and your community in a broader context. The test will last your entire life, and it will be comprised of the millions of decisions that, when taken together, will make your life yours. And everything, everything, will be on it. ...I know, right?

Twitter provides us with a wonderful platform to discuss/confront societal problems. We trend Justin Bieber instead.

Scientists have invented a new strain of cannabis without the high. They celebrated with non-alcoholic beer and furious dry-humping.

Celebrate true friends. They are a part of you that always sparkles.

Treat yourself today! You are a unique, sparkling, spectacular soul. Celebrate you!

Like many people, I feel like celebrating. Remember this feeling. It is human, and can help us understand when others express bloodlust.

Facebook is big. Bigger than Justin Bieber or Ashton Kutcher's Twitter following. Hell, it's even bigger than obesity and possibly just as lethal!

Each day offers a reason to celebrate. Find it and experience true bliss.

♥We acknowledge & celebrate the grace♥ strength♥ & vital energy of every person touched by a brain tumor♥

The problem nowadays is that, by and large, we do a pretty bad job of picking role models. We glorify actors, singers, athletes, and generic “celebrities,” only to be disappointed when—predictably—it turns out that their excellence at reciting, singing, playing basketball, or racking up Facebook likes and Twitter followers has pretty much nothing to do with their moral fiber.

Around 2010, Peter Thiel, the PayPal cofounder and early Facebook investor, began promoting the idea that the technology industry had let people down. “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters” became the tagline of his venture capital firm Founders Fund. In an essay called “What Happened to the Future,” Thiel and his cohorts described how Twitter, its 140-character messages, and similar inventions have let the public down. He argued that science fiction, which once celebrated the future, has turned dystopian because people no longer have an optimistic view of technology’s ability to change the world. I

So let’s talk a little about April May’s theory of tiered fame. Tier 1: Popularity You are a big deal in your high school or neighborhood. You have a peculiar vehicle that people around town recognize, you are a pastor at a medium-to-large church, you were once the star of the high school football team. Tier 2: Notoriety You are recognized and/or well-known within certain circles. Maybe you’re a preeminent lepidopterist whom all the other lepidopterists idolize. Or you could be the mayor or meteorologist in a medium-sized city. You might be one of the 1.1 million living people who has a Wikipedia page. Tier 3: Working-Class Fame A lot of people know who you are and they are distributed around the world. There’s a good chance that a stranger will approach you to say hi at the grocery store. You are a professional sports player, musician, author, actor, television host, or internet personality. You might still have to hustle to make a living, but your fame is your job. You’ll probably trend on Twitter if you die. Tier 4: True Fame You get recognized by fans enough that it is a legitimate burden. People take pictures of you without your permission, and no one would scoff if you called yourself a celebrity. When you start dating someone, you wouldn’t be surprised to read about it in magazines. You are a performer, politician, host, or actor whom the majority of people in your country would recognize. Your humanity is so degraded that people are legitimately surprised when they find out that you’re “just like them” because, sometimes, you buy food. You never have to worry about money again, but you do need a gate with an intercom on your driveway. Tier 5: Divinity You are known by every person in your world, and you are such a big deal that they no longer consider you a person. Your story is much larger than can be contained within any human lifetime, and your memory will continue long after your earthly form wastes away. You are a founding father of a nation, a creator of a religion, an emperor, or an idea. You are not currently alive.

I have a strong aversion to Twitter, and yet there is a social obligation that forces me to pop in and spy on celebrities now and then. I don’t get Twitter. It’s impossible to follow conversation threads, and it’s too easy to spend hours and hours clicking on random names, and the next thing you know, you've become infatuated with Tweet photos from the Kardashians.

I celebrate who I am, what I love, and all of my blessings that lead to joy.

Celebration and laughter are two of the richest gifts of life.

We live in a world where we will share everything about celebrities on social media but our friend's business posts are invisible.

Lily Calloway and Loren Hale are having a vow renewal ceremony. Celebrity Crush is posting pics of her dress. It’s only been trending on Twitter all day.

Smart, dedicated people lost their lives all the time as they trained to be the best they could be to serve their country. Celebrities broke a nail and they immediately took to Twitter, alerting their millions of followers to the “injury,” which in turn elicited thousands of replies from people with apparently not enough going on in their lives. And all the while brave men and women died in silence, forgotten by all except their families.

You tweeted?” I question. “Twitter, social networking, innit?” “I know what Twitter is, Jimmy.” Jimmy smiles devilishly. This guy is bad news through and through. “Stay off Twitter, Sweet Lips, it’s full of celebrity wannabe’s and wanna-don’t-be’s.

Trump is the Kim Kardashian of American politics, replacing substance with solipsism and issues debates with Twitter feuds, and showing a rare talent for grabbing the attention of an ADD nation round the clock as he tries to be Troll in Chief. “Celebrity

Of course that was before reality TV, Twitter, Twaddle, and the like managed to reduce the average attention span of most of the world’s population to two minutes, wither our long-term memory to fourteen months, and convince us that the most admirable of all individuals are not the likes of George Washington, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Jonas Salk, Mother Teresa, and Nikola Tesla, but instead whatever celebrity just won Dancing with the Stars and whatever dancing cat just drew ten million hits for its YouTube video.

Twitter could not be described as it was: a mechanism by which teenagers tormented each other into suicide while obsessing about ephemeral celebrities and on which Adeline argued about whether or not she hated the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory of 1911.

All the bad publicity they brought down on us, yes, it came, and yes, it hurt us—for a day. That’s how long the dirt clung, maybe a bit less. Twitter, Facebook, TV and internet news—you know how long a story stays up on a news website these days, unless it’s about some celebrity scandal? Guess. Go on—guess. Three hours. That’s how much we hurt. And then the world turned, and someone tweeted something new, and everyone retweeted it and moved on, and nothing fucking changes. That’s the world. That’s people power. That’s all it fucking means.

Social networking technology allows us to spend our time engaged in a hypercompetitive struggle for attention, for victories in the currency of “likes.” People are given more occasions to be self-promoters, to embrace the characteristics of celebrity, to manage their own image, to Snapchat out their selfies in ways that they hope will impress and please the world. This technology creates a culture in which people turn into little brand managers, using Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and Instagram to create a falsely upbeat, slightly overexuberant, external self that can be famous first in a small sphere and then, with luck, in a large one. The manager of this self measures success by the flow of responses it gets. The social media maven spends his or her time creating a self-caricature, a much happier and more photogenic version of real life. People subtly start comparing themselves to other people’s highlight reels, and of course they feel inferior.

Listen to. To hear with thoughtful attention. To hold something close, to attend to it, to be astonished by it, to devote your life to its mysteries, to name it precisely, to wonder how it comes to be. To stay awake to it. To move closer to the wild and twittering night. To let it cover you and keep you safe. To me, listening is starting to sound a lot like love.

These social media shamings bear an uncanny resemblance to medieval witch hunts.” If you were accused of being a witch back then, you were shit out of luck. Being accused was all it took. Forget “innocent until proven guilty.” Nobody bothered to prove your guilt. Nobody dared to speak up on your behalf, for fear of being called a witch sympathizer. Because if you were seen as the friend of a witch, you were the next one to be accused of being a witch. As soon as a woman was accused of being a witch, she was a pariah without any friends. Nobody wanted to be seen in public with her. The whole village ganged up on her. Everyone was trying to outdo everyone else in their antiwitch fervor: “Look at me! I'm throwing rocks at the witch! Look at how much I hate witches! I am definitely NOT a witch myself!” Whenever I see a social media mob ganging up on a celebrity for supposedly saying something “offensive” it reminds me of the Salem witch hysteria: “That's racist! And me calling you a racist proves that I'm definitely not a racist myself! That's sexist! I shame you! And that means I'm definitely not sexist myself! I shame you for being a bad person. That means I'm a good person! Look at how really really offended I am! That means I'm a really really good person!” According to the bible, Jesus said "let he who is without sin throw the first rock." But a lot of people seem to think he said: "If you throw rocks at someone else, it proves that you're without sin.

Covering politics like sports has created a self-reinforcing incentive structure that is not dissimilar to the one the ESPN’S SportsCenter has on the fundamentals of basketball. There is a long-running concern from basketball purists that the fundamentals of the game – passing, defense, and footwork – are eroding. The theory goes that players want to be like the stars they see on SportsCenter. You don’t get on SportsCenter by doing the nitty-gritty work of winning basketball games. The more extreme the play, the more dramatic the showboating and celebrating, the more likely to be a feature in a coveted highlight segment. The reward system benefits the opposite behavior most basketball coaches would like to see in their players. This is the SportsCenter effect.

During the period in which newspapers were initially reporting on how asylum-seeking immigrants were having their young children ripped from them, presidential daughter and advisor Ivanka Trump tweeted a photograph of herself beatifically embracing her small son. When Samantha Bee performed a fierce excoriation of Trump’s incivility in both supporting her father’s administration, and posting such a cruel celebration of her own intact family, she called her a “feckless cunt.” It was this epithet, one that Donald Trump had himself used as an insult against women on multiple past occasions, that sent the media into a spiral of shocked alarm and prompted Trump himself to recommend, via Twitter, that Bee’s network, TBS, fire her. But neither Trump’s past use of the word to demean women, nor his possible violation of the First Amendment, provoked as much horror as the feminist comedian’s deployment of a slur that she had used before on her show often in reference to herself. Typically only the incivility of the less powerful toward the more powerful can be widely understood as such, and thus be subject to such intense censure. Which is what made #metoo so fraught and revolutionary. It was a period during which some of the most powerful faced repercussion.

Even without a profile, searching your name on twitter is extremely common, especially if you're a celebrity, as I am and will be until the day I die. I shamefully admit that after quitting twitter, I used to search 'James Acaster' numerous times throughout the day. Don't get me wrong, the very act of searching 'James Acaster' isn't anything to be ashamed of. Most people search those very words during their lifetime. In fact, it's one of the most popular web searches out there. It only adopts a tinge of sadness when the person searching 'James Acaster' is James Acaster himself and as James Acaster, that's the position I found myself in.

The channel does not pay lip service to fairness. It does not employ any neutral commentators. On the contrary, it celebrates its own ability to manipulate reality. At one point in 2018, the station showed a clip from a press conference; the then leader of the opposition party, Grzegorz Schetyna, was asked what his party achieved during its eight years in government, from 2007 to 2015. The clip shows Schetyna pausing and frowning; the video slows down and then ends. It’s as if he had nothing to say. In reality, Schetyna spoke for several minutes about the mass construction of roads, investments in the countryside, and advances in foreign policy. But this manipulated clip—one example of many—was deemed such a success that for several days, it remained pinned to the top of Telewizja Polska’s Twitter feed. Under Law and Justice, state television doesn’t just produce regime propaganda; it draws attention to the fact that it is doing so. It doesn’t just twist and contort information, it glories in deceit.

Beyoncé and Rihanna were pop stars. Pop stars were musical performers whose celebrity had exploded to the point where they could be identified by single words. You could say BEYONCÉ or RIHANNA to almost anyone anywhere in the industrialized world and it would conjure a vague neurological image of either Beyoncé or Rihanna. Their songs were about the same six subjects of all songs by all pop stars: love, celebrity, fucking, heartbreak, money and buying ugly shit. It was the Twenty-First Century. It was the Internet. Fame was everything. Traditional money had been debased by mass production. Traditional money had ceased to be about an exchange of humiliation for food and shelter. Traditional money had become the equivalent of a fantasy world in which different hunks of vampiric plastic made emphatic arguments about why they should cross the threshold of your home. There was nothing left to buy. Fame was everything because traditional money had failed. Fame was everything because fame was the world’s last valid currency. Beyoncé and Rihanna were part of a popular entertainment industry which deluged people with images of grotesque success. The unspoken ideology of popular entertainment was that its customers could end up as famous as the performers. They only needed to try hard enough and believe in their dreams. Like all pop stars, Beyoncé and Rihanna existed off the illusion that their fame was a shared experience with their fans. Their fans weren’t consumers. Their fans were fellow travelers on a journey through life. In 2013, this connection between the famous and their fans was fostered on Twitter. Beyoncé and Rihanna were tweeting. Their millions of fans were tweeting back. They too could achieve their dreams. Of course, neither Beyoncé nor Rihanna used Twitter. They had assistants and handlers who packaged their tweets for maximum profit and exposure. Fame could purchase the illusion of being an Internet user without the purchaser ever touching a mobile phone or a computer. That was a difference between the rich and the poor. The poor were doomed to the Internet, which was a wonderful resource for watching shitty television, experiencing angst about other people’s salaries, and casting doubt on key tenets of Mormonism and Scientology. If Beyoncé or Rihanna were asked about how to be like them and gave an honest answer, it would have sounded like this: “You can’t. You won’t. You are nothing like me. I am a powerful mixture of untamed ambition, early childhood trauma and genetic mystery. I am a portal in the vacuum of space. The formula for my creation is impossible to replicate. The One True God made me and will never make the like again. You are nothing like me.

Like the rainbow in clouds and the rain drop in mud You irked like a torn of love in my heart. My naught desire is burning, as my beautiful hope is unfulfilled. Is it to raise the madness of love in me or to kill me? You are the girl I wished for, the damsel that left me, you are a merciless demon and the craze in my heart. You are a fish eyed beauty and a surprising sage, you are my moonlight in the dark... Come to me my beloved!! How do I live without you? Come to me my beloved! Can’t you be seen to my eyes? I am living in your thoughts this way... I considered you my heartbeat, how do I live without you? Come to me my beloved! My dear girl, oh beauty bird.. my heart slipped down magically and started roaming around you chanting your name in your quest, dancing just like you to reach me. How many days or years it might be, I would be waiting to see you even if it takes a hundred years. Let there be any dangers or whirlpools ahead, oh my love.. I will be beside you in everything. Shall we exist as one together? This is a never-ending celebration. Oh my gosh, my gorgeous babe.. You are a sweet unforgettable thought. Glimpses of your twittering laugh and the gleam of your eyes can be seen tempting deep in my heart. Wherever I am and whatever I do. I keep seeing the love of billions of my dreams. Shall I place you deep inside my carved heard and workshop you with the flowers of my blood? Shall we pull the time backwards and write our story again? How do I live without you? Come to me my beloved!

Dance away your density and celebrate your splendor.

Joy is all around me, and I celebrate it all.

I celebrate my spirit with joy and playful abandon.

I celebrate the connections in my life, from my past, present, and future. I joyfully accept love in all its healthy forms!

The solar eclipse of Donald Trump signaled the complete triumph of celebrity culture over every aspect of American life. A reality TV star with a casino and a Twitter feed. An egomaniac to rule them all. The message and the medium had merged. The message was fame, and fame was money, money was power, and power was just more fame, for ever and ever, amen.

Twitter and Social media are 1,000 times more dangerous than Radio Rwanda. This is the world's biggest and only Propaganda tool for fascism and hatred politics. Billions of people are wasting their time there, and in return, it's making them violent, filling their hearts with hatred and their minds with irrational fake information. And forcefully turning them into political slaves.

When people are ejected in these ways from our social networks—whether online or in our daily lives—they can genuinely seem to have disappeared, to have been muted for real. But that is very far from the truth. When someone is pushed out of progressive conversations or communities because they said or did something hurtful or ignorant, or questioned an identity orthodoxy, or got too successful too fast and was deemed due for a takedown, their absence is frequently met with celebration, as Wolf’s exile from Twitter was. But these people don’t disappear just because we can no longer see them. They go somewhere else. And many of them go to the Mirror World: a world uncannily like our own, but quite obviously warped.

I've lived my life fighting to overcome but still yet the troubles I face, may never end in this endless race.

So what about atheism? Well, it doesn’t take a lot of thought to realize that atheism causes all manner of actions. For a non-belief, it leads a pretty busy and exciting life. For example, many Internet-dwelling atheists spend hundreds of hours reading sceptical websites, editing Wikipedia articles, writing angry blogs, frequenting atheist discussion forums, and posting snarky anti-religious remarks on Twitter. These look very much like actions to me. Actions, I presume, caused by their atheism. The same applies offline too. I know many atheists who attend conferences, buy T-shirts with atheist slogans, or fasten amusing atheist bumper stickers to their Hondas. Some, like Richard Dawkins, write books. Now, there’s a puzzler. Why did Richard Dawkins write The God Delusion? We’ve asked that question before, but now we can come at it from a different angle. What was it that drove him to pour endless hours into typing, drafting, editing, and refining? Presumably, it was his atheism. Likewise, it was atheism that led many enthusiastic young sceptics to rush out and buy it, causing, if not much rejoicing in heaven, certainly much celebration in the North Oxford branch of whomever Dawkins banks with. For a non-belief, a non-thing, atheism looks extraordinarily lively, and thus we need to be a little suspicious of anybody who tells us that atheism is nothing at all.

Sure, not everyone who posts on your Facebook wall or tweets about you has as much sway or trendsetting ability as some celebrities, but they certainly can spread the word on your behalf—easily and quickly—especially if you thank and encourage them. (Some users probably have more online influence than some so-called celebrities too!)

Therefore, with these celebrity wannabees, 1) popularity—or the appearance of it—can be measured by how many Facebook friends or Twitter followers one has managed to acquire; 2) fame—however fleeting—can be attained by many through appearing on reality television shows or in videos gone viral on YouTube; even 3) wealth—or the appearance of it—can be attained through the buying of expensive homes, cars, and various adult toys on relatively cheap credit; and, finally, 4) real power is admittedly harder to achieve but not beyond the grasp of those willing to sacrifice ethics and do whatever it takes to attain it. This fourth quality or possession is probably as it has always been, but having easier access to the other three may just put this one within the grasp of more, especially those undeserving of it or who would possibly misuse it. Thankfully, not everyone in this category craves or seeks power. But beware those who do.

To date, some 108 billion people have lived and died on Earth. Yet, we still think our individual lives are so fabulous that we celebrate them daily on social media. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. Not anymore. It’s the un-promoted life that’s not worth living. Know thyself has morphed into flaunt thyself. Once upon a time, fame was tangentially related to talent, hard work, and accomplishment. Now the metric for evaluating a life is who’s got more Facebook friends, Twitter, or Instagram followers. We

Then I asked him the question that would change my life. “Mr. Trump,” I said, “one of the things people love about you is you speak your mind and you don’t use a politician’s filter. However, that is not without its downsides. In particular, when it comes to women. You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals.’” “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” he quipped. The crowd chuckled at his Rosie O’Donnell comment. I passed no judgment on the audience, but I was not going to join them in laughing. “For the record,” I said, “it was well beyond Rosie O’Donnell.” Trump knew it too. “I’m sure it was,” he said. We had fact-checked every word of that question. Rosie had, no question, been vicious toward Trump too, and if it had only been her, I would not have asked that question. But what I’d seen in my research binder was that he’d made a habit of attacking women regularly with these sorts of terms—mocking their looks and sexualizing them. The women he’d belittled in the terms I used in my question included, but were not limited to, Arianna Huffington, Bette Midler, New York Times columnist Gail Collins, and a lawyer requesting a prearranged break to pump breast milk for her baby (“disgusting”). There were many, many others. “Your Twitter account,” I continued, “has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president, and how will you answer the charge from Hillary Clinton, who is likely to be the Democratic nominee, that you are part of the ‘war on women’?” First Trump said that we’d gotten too politically correct in this country. And then this: “What I say is what I say. And honestly, Megyn, if you don’t like it, I’m sorry. I’ve been very nice to you, although I could probably maybe not be, based on the way you have treated me. But I wouldn’t do that.” He looked angry, I thought. After all my planning for that moment, I was relieved that he hadn’t attacked me personally in his response. Still, I felt his anger, and understood him perfectly. He was making a veiled but very clear threat. I’d known Trump for several years by this point. We’d had a mostly good—but also complicated—relationship. Seared into my mind was a threat he’d made to me by phone just four days earlier to “unleash” what he called his “beautiful Twitter account” on me. I expected I would find out what he meant by that soon, and indeed I would.

Some businesses take a unique approach to this. Footwear brand Toms, already beloved thanks to its renowned blend of “social purpose” and product, forgoes splashy celebrity marketing campaigns. Instead, they engage and elevate real customers. During the summer of 2016, Toms engaged more than 3.5 million people in a single day using what they call tribe power. The company tapped into its army of social media followers for its annual One Day Without Shoes initiative to gather millions of Love Notes on social media. However, Toms U.K. marketing manager Sheela Thandasseri explained that their tribe’s Love Notes are not relegated to one day. “Our customers create social content all the time showing them gifting Toms or wearing them on their wedding day, and they tag us because they want us to be part of it.”2 Toms uses customer experience management platform Sprinklr to aggregate interactions on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Toms then engages in a deep analysis of the data generated by its tribe, learning what customers relish and dislike about its products, stores, and salespeople so they can optimize their Complete Product Experience (CPE). That is an aggressive, all-in approach that extracts as much data as possible from every customer interaction in order to see patterns and craft experiences. Your approach might differ based on factors ranging from budget limitations to privacy concerns. But I can attest that earning love does not necessarily require cutting-edge technology or huge expenditures. What it does require is a commitment to delivering the building blocks of lovability that I reviewed in the previous chapter. Lovability begins with a mindset that makes it a priority. The building blocks are feelings — hope, confidence, fun. If you stack them up over and over again, eventually you will turn those feelings into a tower of meaningful benefits for everyone with a stake in your business, including owners, investors, employees, and customers. Now let’s look more closely at those benefits and the groups they affect.

Note: I am sure that now they will approach Medium to stop me from writing. Let’s see what happens. “A genuine person or celebrity doesn’t need a certificate or blue tick. Such ways are blackmailing your passion, emotion, or willingness. Criminals and money-mongers misuse and try to earn in an ugly and easy way. This trend also discriminates against others who cannot afford such an awkward notion.” Istay determined every day. I cannot tolerate liars and those who misuse their authority and attempt to victimize the righteous for their will and purpose in an illegitimate way to please their godfathers of the mafia and international criminal intelligence agencies. I am pretty sure, after reviewing again the replies from the Twitter team that mirror and endorse the Twitter team, that someone works for intelligence agencies or criminal and mafia groups. Since the beginning months of this year, I have been continuously victimized without specifying why I was posting the wrong things. I am going to publish a few emails that will exhibit the picture of how I was being victimized, harassed, and even threatened about things that I was neither aware of nor that the team explained. I was already under the attacks of criminals and even the gang of filthy-minded gays who were suffering from mental issues and sexual frustration; knowing it, I am not gay. In the Twitter team, the presence of such ones is not excluded since I felt a similar style of victimization. How do they dare to adopt such mean tactics to gain their will and desire? This reply email shows that a screenshot article has been displayed since 2020. After four years, it became an issue for someone in the Twitter team who continued to lock my account and tag the restriction flag. Text of my emails; “I am still uncertain about what to post and what not to post. You didn’t specify why my account was locked, whether it was because of the content I removed or something else. Is it permissible for me to share media and social media links in which my quotes are mentioned? My writings do not contain any personal attacks; nonetheless, thank you.” “You locked my Twitter, @EhsanSehgal, again; you know why you are doing it. Now, I can say only goodbye to my locked account and enjoy your terror. It is not a protection of my account; it is victimization. No more requests to unlock my account. Someone of angelic character will do it without my request. Shame on you all, involved ones.” Team replied; Hello, “We had a look at your account, and it appears that everything is now resolved! If that’s not the case, please reply to this message, and we’ll continue to help. Thanks,” X Support This was a screenshot article from Wikipedia about me on my profile that was illegitimately removed by such people as the Twitter team forced me to remove. Despite that, they continued locking my account to identify and provide an ID or passport. I did that twice and identified several times, but the team seemed not satisfied since their goal was something else; they would not approach nor be able to do it. To stop such criminal torture, I deactivated my account and decided never to come back there again.

Fifty years ago, they would have been celebrating in the streets. Even six months ago, they might very well have been cheering Elon on in newsrooms across the country and around the world.

giving them back to any celebrity whose account had over a million followers. Just as suddenly as the level playing field had begun, it had ended; the legacy Blue Check system was back in place, as arbitrary

Deep in the tangles of soft green foliage a tiny bird twittered out its song of celebration. The tinkle of its tune described the beauty of its homeland. The birdsong drifted to the highest treetops and floated its way down to the loamy soils.

In truth, you’re eager for the slightest excuse to turn away from what you’re doing, in order to escape how disagreeable it feels to be doing it; you slide away to the Twitter pile-on or the celebrity gossip site with a feeling not of reluctance but of relief.

This witness that we give, this invitation to become co-citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem with us, is fostered within the culture of the church. Here is a key truth: the only way we are able to “participate in everything as citizens” is by ongoing participation in the life of God’s people. I don’t mean following a celebrity preacher on Twitter and Instagram. I don’t mean listening to our favorite theologian’s podcast or the local Christian radio station on our morning commute. I mean butts in the pews, eyes on the altar, ears attuned to the pulpit, mouths chewing the bread of the Supper, tongues red with Communion wine, hands clasping the hands of fellow believers, vocal cords singing hymns, knees bent in prayer. The only way we can be fully present in our modern Babylons is by simultaneously being fully present, bodily present, in a congregation we call home.

But virtue signaling is a bipartisan, even apolitical action. Twitter is overrun with dramatic pledges of allegiance to the Second Amendment that function as intra-right virtue signaling, and it can be something like virtue signaling when people post the suicide hotline after a celebrity death. Few of us are totally immune to the practice, as it intersects with a real desire for political integrity. Posting photos from a protest against border family separation, as I did while writing this, is a microscopically meaningful action, an expression of genuine principle, and also, inescapably, some sort of attempt to signal that I am good.

If Tivo marks the beginning of the shift from the Brand Age to the Product Age, the summer of 2020 saw the Brand Age’s end. The killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests briefly displaced the pandemic in the front and center of our national consciousness, making obvious the passing of the Brand Age into history. Seemingly every brand company did what they always do when America’s sins are pulled out from the back of the closet where we try to keep them hidden: they called up their agencies and posted inspiring words, arresting images, and black rectangles. Message: We care. Only this time, it didn’t resonate. Their brand magic fizzled. First on social media, then tumbling from there onto newspapers and evening news, activists and customers started using the tools of the new age to compare these companies’ carefully crafted brand messages with the reality of their operations. “This you?” became the Twitter meme that exposed the brand wizards. Companies who posted about their “support” for black empowerment were called out when their own websites revealed the music did not match the words. The NFL claimed it celebrates protest, and the internet tweeted back, “This you?” under a picture of Colin Kaepernick kneeling. L’Oréal posted that “speaking out is worth it” and got clapped back with stories about dropping a model just three years earlier for speaking out against racism. The performative wokeness across brands felt forced and hollow. Systemic racism is a serious issue, and a 30-second spot during The Masked Singer doesn’t prove you are serious about systemic racism. That’s always been true, about ads on any issue, but social media and the ease of access to data on the internet has made it much harder for companies to pretend.

Give yourself a break. It’s not a race. Celebrate others success. Be a positive force and it will attract others like you. Stop tearing down others and their hard work.

Hate, Jealousy and witchcraft is booming on social media platforms and has disguised itself as being savage or as black twitter. Where people bring down the ones who are making it and destroying their happiness and lives in the name of retweets and likes.

Jack and Ev looked at each other for a moment in the boardroom. At that moment neither realized that they were both fundamental to what Twitter had become. The perfect equilibrium of two different ways of looking at the world: the need to talk about yourself, compared with the need to let people talk about what was happening around them. One could never have existed without the other. That balance, or battle, had created Twitter. A tool that could be used by corporate titans and teens, by celebrities and nobodies, by government officials and revolutionaries. A place where people with fundamentally different views of the world, like Jack and Ev, could converse.

Everyone has a bit of “Tumblr teen” in them, self-reflexively announcing their social positions as a buffer against the now-cartoonish refrain to “check your privilege.” But while plenty of white people will flag their own whiteness, eagerly so in some cases, these admissions are curiously conditional. When the news broke that several high-profile parents were implicated in a conspiracy to illegally finesse their children into prestigious universities, publications (from Refinery29 to the Atlantic to Vox to, somewhat ironically, U.S. News and World Report) took care to name the collaboration of class and race that enabled such entitlement. On these particular bad actors, my Twitter feed was mostly on the same page. However, once people began reporting their own stories of educational fortitude, the material value of whiteness was suddenly less germane to the conversation. Unlike the children of celebrities, the people I followed implied, they had worked hard and earned it wholesale. It seemed the whiteness of celebrity children worked according to the rule, while everyone else’s whiteness was the exception. The gap between knowing and naming, let alone reckoning, remains vast.