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Years hence, historians will look back and tell the story of how the revolution began with a social media nerd at the National Park Service.
An interesting phenomenon has developed over the last few days. Twitter accounts with the federal government, and now at least one big outside entity, appear to be trolling the new president of the United States, Donald Trump.
It all began a few days ago when the National Park Service’s Twitter account retweeted a New York Times reporter who posted photos comparing the crowd size at the Obama inauguration with that of Trump’s.
Trump responded by immediately banning the Park Service from tweeting any further. Here’s that initial tweet on inauguration day, January 20:
Next up: NOAA’s climate twitter account, the day after the swearing-in, tweets about — duh duh duh — climate change, knowing perfectly well that Donald Trump thinks climate change is a hoax created by China (seriously):
Then things got interesting. First up, the Department of Defense tweets a warning about social media use that could easily be about its own commander-in-chief. It’s difficult to believe that no one at the Pentagon saw this tweet and didn’t immediately think “that’s Trump.”
Then comes the Badlands National Park Service twitter account. They went off on a tear about climate change yesterday, January 24, only to be forced to ultimately delete the tweets. There are reports the account was hijacked by a former employee:
And the Golden Gate National Park Service adds its two cents:
Then NASA Climate weighs in:
The irony of the president of the United States madly censoring science was not lost on CNN’s Jim Sciutto:
Then, the pièce de résistance, Merriam Webster dictionary weighed in, a lot, this weekend. First up, on the day that the Trump White House is debating the existence of “alternative facts,” Merriam Webster’s Word of the Day is “fact”:
Then a few hours later, MW reports on the use of the word “fascism”:
And the word “feminism”:
Oh but it gets better. Yesterday, Merriam-Webster, seemingly out of nowhere, treats us to the word “claquer” — meaning, someone who is part of a group that’s paid to applaud. They’re clearly referring to the news that Donald Trump brought outside fluffers to the CIA on Saturday to clap and cheer, and make it seem like CIA employees were breaking their vow of impartiality.
And now, a whole series of alternative protest Twitter accounts have sprung up, claiming to represent the now-censored social media voice of the various federal agencies. Probably the most successful account is @AltNatParkSer, which had just a few thousand followers 24 hours ago, then 70,000 last night, and right now 12 hours later has over 300,000 followers.
Why are federal agencies, and Merriam-Webster, so good at throwing shade at Donald Trump on Twitter? It might have something to do with just how bad Trump’s social media staff is. We reported a few days ago that the new POTUS twitter account was using a picture of Obama’s inauguration as its own:
And then last night we find that the White House twitter account is using a picture of the US Capitol building as a purported picture of the White House!
Amateurs.
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