So I’m wondering if I should call this post, idioms, idiots, and Twitter? I just can’t decide. I’m feeling politically incorrect today, so if you don’t want to hear about it turn away from this post now. Yeah, I know a little reverse psychology so now you are all hooked and you’re going to read this post. OK , you’ve been warned. Also, there is a danger today of run on sentences.
I have been on Twitter since the beginning. As in before, Elon Musk probably ever knew it existed. I am literally a Twitter OG.
Twitter started in 2006 and I joined in 2008. Why I joined back then as we were trying to see if historic downtown Ardmore, PA as in the historic business district. (Of course looking at Ardmore today, I’m wondering what we saved it from because we couldn’t save it from Lower Merion Township but that’s another story for another day.)
Anyway, social media was in its infancy, and we were fighting eminent domain for private game against a municipality who is that point had hired outside, professional PR folks on the taxpayer dime to fight residents and to try to jam their plan through. So we harvested social media in its early days to help us get our message out there because it first no media was interested in why we were trying to save Ardmore at all. Also amusing is PR guy at the time put a price on our heads and accusing of us of hiding our identities on this new thing called social media although everyone knew exactly who we were, and how’s that for amusing? (Well it was to all of us who got up at meeting after public meeting stating our names.)
So yeah, I’m kind of a social media OG in general because we learned to use it early on to help our local issues. No fluffy bunnies. This is of course why I’m also always amused by fauxblicists who want to charge small businesses out the wazoo for ummm…. posting on their personal Instagram photos taken with their phone but not actually placing anything with media. Of course, that brings up the eternal debate of influencer or freebie seeker, but again, I digress. I do that occasionally.
So today I saw something float by from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani go by. It just gave me a big case of the oy veys. I mean, after all, this is the guy who gave the press conference from the landscaping business in Philadelphia for Trump his personal Jim Jones (this reference is to the Jonestown massacre. Look it up and don’t drink the Kool-Aid.)
Anyway, creepy old Rudy with his hands in his pants apparently is a podcaster now:
Forget about his really old Bucky the beaver headshot he uses on Twitter that makes him look like a creepy budding serial killer, it’s the idea that Mr. hands in his pants has a podcast and people subscribe to it. It’s equally too much and hysterical and pathetic so I gave it a big old oy as in oy vey.
That’s it above that’s exactly what I tweeted. Then came this via email:
Whaaaaaat? Did I mention I’ve been tweeting since 2008 and never had this happen? So then I go look at Twitter:
I just kind of sat there for a minute. Because then I looked at the replies, and other things the people reply to him or say about him and I’m thinking Twitter picked me? I expressed my opinion. That was it. I wasn’t on the steps of the U.S. Capitol one infamous January 6th playing storm the Bastille.
I used no profanity (I rarely do on social media), and when you think of the things that Twitter today allows on Twitter, it just kind of blew my mind. Like the pornography and the pornographers that want to add you to their “list“ while posting photos of women with literally everything hanging out with peekaboo panties. But hey because someone didn’t like my opinion about creepy AF Rudy Giuliani I get to deal with this?
So I challenged their decision about my tweet, because it was absolutely ridiculous in my opinion, and I got this:
This, of course, also deserves a giant oy vey, because the whole scenario is utterly ridiculous.
The irony is once upon a time I thought Rudy Giuliani was kind of a cool dude. I’m guessing 9/11 was his moment. During that time I thought he was fabulous in spite of all the Page Six of it all of his private life.
Somewhere along the line, the wheels came off I think in Rudy Giuliani’s brain. I think he seriously believed he went around in a super hero’s cape. Anyway, I went from respecting him for the way he was during 9/11 to watching a human train wreck go forward in life. So when this tweet went by, I was like “really?” People pay to subscribe to his lunacy now while he’s still being investigated in Washington for whatever in election probes? Alrighty then.
Now the discussion is ensuing about what I said, so allow me to include a couple of definitions via screenshot:
I am not a racist. I used a word AND a phrase that are commonly used. The phrase I used, while out of favor, dates back to the early 19th century. It’s literally an Americanism; an idiom.
The word oy is used every damn day. I use it. I learned how to use it originally from my Jewish friends. Just like my black friends will say to me undoubtedly why did I use that stupid phrase but they’re not going to brand me a racist. And why is that because I did not have racist intent, I was expressing my opinion about a ridiculous human being, residing in New York City, or on whichever planet he lives.
Now I’m being told to “reset.”
I hate phrases like reset, as I am not a machine with a button on my forehead. I am tired of living in a world where every time we open our mouths, somebody is telling us we shouldn’t say something? Or suddenly something is bad and punishable although it’s been part of every day vernacular for centuries. It’s part of our history and like a lot of our history maybe it’s out of fashion, maybe it’s out of favor, maybe it’s inconvenient, maybe it’s embarrassing but it doesn’t mean the person using a phrase in this case me is either a bad person or a racist.
Sorry, not sorry I can’t keep up some days. Especially considering what is allowed on social media compared to an unintentional offhand remark I made one time.
Oy vey, Twitter. Like Elon Musk cares about this anyway?
Go forth and don’t use the wrong phrases today like I did or you’ll end up in Twitter jail even temporarily. But don’t mess with my first amendment rights.
Rant over.
