Tag: Twitter

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At Large Opinion

Elon-Gate

Elon Musk’s avatar on X (Photo: Elon Musk | x)

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” — Maya Angelou

Here we are, less than 90 days away from a nation-defining election, and the world’s richest man is showing us who he is, every single day. I’m speaking about Elon Musk, the South African mega-billionaire behind Tesla cars, SpaceX rocketry, and xAI, the world’s largest supercomputer, now operating in Memphis. 

Musk also runs X, formerly Twitter, the world’s biggest news and chat app, and herein lies a problem. I’m still using X, sometimes against my better judgment, given the amount of racist, misogynist, and white supremacist content that streams from the site. I delete and block posts (and posters) every single day, but there’s always a steady torrent of horrible content, much of it generated by bots and AI. 

So why am I still on X? Because it’s still the best place for an information junkie like me to get breaking news. I follow all the major news outlets’ X accounts, plus a couple thousand journalists and writers whose views and reporting I respect, as well as lots of local folks with smart (and often funny) takes on Memphis politics, sports, food, and entertainment. Still, it’s a flood of information, much of it worthless or worse, and you have to be diligent in mining the diamonds from the dreck.

Even when X was Twitter, before Musk bought it for a sweet $44 billion and changed the name, it had lots of crap posts, but the policing of intentional disinformation and vile Nazi-ish stuff was better, and it was usually taken down quickly. Now, not so much. That’s mainly because Musk has taken a hands-on approach to the site, and under the guise of “free speech,” he is consciously permitting, and even encouraging, posts that traffic from the far fringes of the right-wing, white supremacist world. 

And it’s not like he’s hiding his intentions. He’s got 194 million followers! (When you join X, you get Musk’s posts and reposts automatically, unless you intentionally unfollow him.) His personal account is a fount of racism, misleading statistics, and outright lies. Often, Musk posts an obviously racist meme and asks — a la Tucker Carlson — “Is this true? Just asking.”

Musk is a Trump supporter, of course. He often reposts anti-Kamala Harris tropes, including those that are obviously false or misleading. On Monday, he hosted Trump for a two-hour “interview” on X, during which Musk lavished praise and admiration for Trump’s “honesty,” among other insane comments. Musk’s politics would be anathema to most of the residents of this decidedly blue city, I suspect, but make no mistake, Musk is here, and in a big way. Needless to say, I’m not a fan, either. He seems weirdly and dangerously unbalanced.

And speaking of fans (and clumsy segues), Musk is now running a bunch of non-permitted gas turbines to power his Memphis supercomputer from its site in South Memphis. They are noisy and are sending gassy fumes into the atmosphere 24 hours a day. I urge you to read Sam Hardiman’s well-reported Daily Memphian story from last Saturday. 

Citing a “source close to the company … who is not authorized to speak publicly,” the DM said xAI had determined it had the right to run the non-permitted turbines for 364 days. The DM story also quoted the Greater Memphis Chamber on the matter: “XAI obtained official guidance that based on federal, state, and local regulations that permitting would not be required for this temporary solution to use turbines for testing its supercomputer.” How nice. Let’s hope this deal works out for the benefit of the city, and not just for xAI. I have my doubts. Musk is just not a Memphis kind of guy. He’s a Trump kind of guy, with similar baggage.

Need more proof? Consider this recent Musk repost from Daniel Concannon, the self-titled “World’s Most Unbearably White Man”: “White people have been taught that white people are evil and everyone else is good. Non-white people have been taught that white people are evil and everyone else is good. That’s not divide and conquer. That’s ‘Kill Whitey.’” Musk added a single comment: “True.” 

Elon Musk is showing us who he is, folks. It would behoove Memphis — and the rest of the world — to believe him. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Rough Water Ahead

Hutchinsphoto | Dreamstime.com

On Sunday, former President Donald Trump attacked American Jews on his Truth Social platform. His message: Jews in the United States need to “get their act together” and show more appreciation for the state of Israel and Donald Trump “before it is too late.”

That concluding sentence caused a lot of blowback from Jewish groups, who saw Trump’s post as a veiled threat and a thinly disguised message to his MAGA and white supremacist base that Jews were a problem. It was remarks like these that got Trump banned from Twitter and led to his forming Truth Social, where his audience is relatively minuscule but where he can post whatever lies and racist tropes that arise in his addled brain without constraint.

Speaking of addled brains: Earlier in the week, wealthy rapper and confirmed lunatic, Kanye West, offered his own anti-Semitic post on Twitter, stating he was going to “go death con 3 [sic] on JEWISH PEOPLE.” He later posted that George Floyd was not murdered but died of a Fentanyl overdose (a racist trope that was disproved at trial). West was banned from Twitter and restricted on Instagram for his remarks, but he immediately announced that he was going to buy the troubled wanna-be-Twitter social medium, Parler.

Meanwhile, the world’s richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, was nearing a final deal to take over Twitter, the most influential social medium for news and opinion in the world. Musk’s recent remarks on the war in Ukraine make it clear he is a Putin enabler, which could be a problem. Musk has also stated that when he takes over Twitter he will “reduce content moderation” and will allow “all speech that stops short of violating the law,” meaning Trump, Kanye, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other racists currently banned from Twitter would be reinstated and allowed to spew whatever garbage they want, as long as it’s “legal.” And meaning that Truth Social, Parler, and Twitter would all be owned by egocentric billionaires. Good times.

This is nothing new, of course. American mass media has long been dominated by wealthy men who used their influential mass-media platforms to further their own ambitions and political views. In the early 20th century, William Randolph Hearst owned 30 influential newspapers that featured lurid stories on crime, corruption, politics, and sex. Hearst controlled the editorial positions and political news in his papers and is considered to have almost single-handedly influenced the United States to declare war on Spain and invade Cuba in 1898.

Little has changed. Consider Rupert Murdoch (Fox News, Wall Street Journal), Michael Bloomberg (Forbes, Business Week), Jeff Bezos (Washington Post, Amazon), and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram). Throw in Musk and Twitter, and that’s a lot of influence and power in the hands of five* self-interested billionaires.

Republicans, the majority of whom are now election deniers and Trump enablers, are naturally quite happy about the possibility of these three social mediums being owned by their kind of people. The official GOP House Judiciary Committee tweeted last week: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” Not subtle, and even more disturbing when you consider that the anti-Semitic garbage Trump and Kanye posted garnered no criticism from any Republican of note.

We are three weeks out from a midterm election that no one seems to have a handle on. The polls are all over the place, with most indicating the Democrats will hold the Senate and lose the House. Still, no one knows, and accurate polling has never been more difficult. When was the last time you answered a call from an unknown number to take a poll? Democrats can take hope from this summer’s landslide pro-choice vote in deep-red Kansas, which the polls missed by double-digit percentage points. Republicans can take hope from the fact that a hypocritical, prevaricating moron like Herschel Walker is polling competitively in the Georgia Senate race, a staggering indictment of the electorate.

In addition to the election drama, Trump is facing multiple indictments in state and federal courts, with the DOJ hovering, waiting for the election to be over before making any moves in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. What we’ve learned after six years of Trump-induced chaos is that democracy is a fragile thing, and that rough water is likely still ahead. Buckle up.

*Editor’s note: In an earlier version of this story, Warren Buffett was listed as one of the billionaire newspaper owners. Buffett divested his newspaper holdings in 2020.

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News News Blog News Feature

Official Tweets in the Eliza Fletcher Case

Credit: Memphis Police Department/Twitter

Much of the official information on the abduction and murder of Eliza Fletcher came from tweets from Memphis Police Department and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

Here’s the chronological sequence of those tweets beginning with her early-morning abduction on Friday, September 2nd.

Friday, September 2nd:

Saturday, September 3rd:

Sunday, September 4th:

Monday: September 5th:

Tuesday, September 6th:

Here is the inmate information for Cleotha Abston, Fletcher’s alleged kidnapper and murderer, posted to the Shelby County Jail website:

Shelby County Jail
Shelby County Jail
Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Polar Bears, a Geenline Van, and Those TBI Alerts 

Posted to Nextdoor by V&E Greenline

Memphis on the internet.

Tweet of the Week

“Zoos are really insane as hell. Ain’t no way a polar bear supposed to be in Memphis, Tennessee,” tweeted @galeonsworld last week.

Van Life

Last week three people stole a minivan and attempted to drive it across the V&E Greenline bridge. 

They didn’t make it far. The bridge is fine, Greenline officials said on Nextdoor last week. But the handrail is not. Damage from a collision with the van will likely cost $5,000, they said.  

“Unfortunately, while this particular incident is unusual, we have seen more and more motorized vehicles using the trail for criminal and recreational purposes,” Greenline officials said.

Posted to Twitter by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation

“No One Easy Answer”

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) apologized for the many alerts that buzzed the phones of Tennesseans at all hours last week. 

“We know it’s been a frustrating morning for many of you,” the TBI tweeted. “Same here, TBH.”

Why? “There is no one easy answer,” the TBI said in a statement. The agency doesn’t send the alerts, a partner does. The alerts also vary across cell providers, change with movements across the state, change with powering a phone on and off, signal strength, wifi availability, and more.

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: The Runaway Wallaby and #MEMthis

Photo: Memphis Zoo

Memphis on the internet.

Walla B.

Last week, a wily wallaby escaped from the Memphis Zoo. The animal’s first order of business was to set up a Twitter account and record its exploits out on the town.

Walla B. (JA’WALLAMANE) cracked jokes about local breweries, wanted to hook up for drinks at Overton Square, went to Huey’s, hinted at a run for county mayor, asked to be a duck master at The Peabody Hotel, and asked if Malco was playing Kangaroo Jack.

Posted to Twitter by @MemphisWallaby

#MEMThis

Last week’s #MEMTHIS had the MEMernet talking on Twitter. Created by the Memphis Grizzlies, it was meant to hashtag the team’s playoff run.

“Whoever made the decision for #MemThis ……. Bruh, WHY do we need brand new, forced ‘tag lines’ for the playoffs?” tweeted @JBthegiant.

@Isaac_Rivals explained, “You read it like Mem This. Sort of like ‘take this’…we’re going to put Memphis in your face & you gotta deal with it type of energy.”

But even the explanation was roasted. @jmtigers1974 tweeted, “I’m not brilliant at marketing/advertising but…If you gotta explain it to Joe Public, then it isn’t any good.”

To it all, @jonah_kaufman tweeted, “It’s easy to get, it’s just awful.”

Categories
News Blog News Feature

Memphis Battles Ice; Governor Lee Tweets About Birthdays, Olympics, and Vaccines

Credit: State of Tennessee/Twitter

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s silence on ice storms that wracked Memphis and left thousands without power continued Wednesday, nearly a week since the situation began. 

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris declared states of emergency after the ice storm caused widespread damage and knocked out power to nearly 130,000 Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW) customers. Financial thresholds of damage must be met to trigger state and federal emergency declarations, and Lee would have to have a say-so in the matter. Such a declaration would provide millions of dollars for the clean-up and restoration efforts.

While meetings on the matter may be happening out of public view, Lee has been silent on the ice storm in his public communications. No news release has been issued from his press team. No visit to Shelby County has been announced. 

On Twitter, where Lee is most active on social media, the governor acknowledged that bad weather had moved into the state. He announced Friday that some state offices in West and Middle Tennessee would be closed or open late due to “hazardous weather and travel conditions.” This is as close as Lee has come to talking publicly about the ice storm that left tens of thousands of Memphians without power and may have killed four people.

Following his weather tweets, Lee tweeted twice about his office’s renewed legal challenge to the federal vaccine mandate. Later that same Friday, as Memphians huddled inside their houses hoping the next falling tree branch wouldn’t pierce their windows or roof, Lee tweeted his proclamation that “the Olympics are covering for Beijing’s brutality but Tennesseans acknowledge the truth, stand against the evil being carried out in plain sight and send our support to U.S. Olympians overseas.” 

On Saturday, Lee was proud that the Tennessee State Capitol building in Nashville was lit red for the American Heart Association. 

After a Sunday Twitter break, Lee was back Monday wishing Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett a happy birthday. 

On Tuesday, as the continuous whine of chainsaws filled the Memphis air, the governor congratulated state employees who earned the Governor’s Excellence in Service Awards. 

On that Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) wrote to Lee requesting that Lee request federal help in the clean-up effort.

“The preliminary damage estimate provided to the West Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) by ML GW is $13 million as of February 7th, 2022” Cohen wrote. “[The Federal Emergency Management Agency – FEMA] administers various programs which could potentially provide relief. For example, the Public Assistance Grant Program could assist with debris removal, repair, replacement or restoration of disaster-damaged and publicly owned facilities. The Individual Assistance and Household programs could assist with temporary residences (rental assistance) or repairs to make
homes safe, sanitary and functional.

“Since the amount of damage from this storm has already exceeded the minimum requirement, I believe a swift request of disaster assistance is prudent to ensure that our county can receive the
necessary support to adequately address the damages that have been incurred.”

Lee had not publicly responded to the letter by Wednesday morning.

But on Wednesday morning, as more than 37,000 MLGW customers were still without power, Lee was back on Twitter to announce that he named Butch Ely, the state’s Commissioner of Finance and Administration, to be deputy governor. 

His silence got Lee a dragging over on the Memphis subreddit where u/Shakeitright asked in a Monday post, “where is the governor?”

Where is the Governor? from memphis
Comment from discussion Shakeitright’s comment from discussion "Where is the Governor?".


Comment from discussion VieraDancer315’s comment from discussion "Where is the Governor?".
Comment from discussion GotMoFans’s comment from discussion "Where is the Governor?".
Comment from discussion cinnamorollcafe’s comment from discussion "Where is the Governor?".
Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Sleeping Cop, Tweet of the Week, and Briarcrest

Posted to TikTok by JT Rodriguez

Memphis on the internet.

On the job

A TikTok from JT Rodriguez seems to show a Memphis Police Department officer asleep in a patrol car. Commenters were split on the video’s veracity. You decide.

Tweet of the week

Now living in Georgia, @Kokfrfr_ proclaimed, “I never lived in Tennessee. I lived in Memphis.”

Double talk

Briarcrest Christian School wrote on Facebook, “A beautiful sunset showing God’s glorious sunset at the Briarcrest campus this evening!” A commenter said, “The Lord painted a beautiful painting in the sky tonight!”

Protest

Posted to Facebook by Hunter Demster

Protesters gathered outside Briarcrest Christian School last week against an adult class from the school called “God Made Them Male and Female and That Was Good.”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Shouting Fire, Playing Telephone

Stuartbur | Dreamstime.com

Last week, the Flyer editorial staff had our regular Wednesday meeting in the office. We crowded around the big table in the “fishbowl” (so called because of its glass wall) conference room and dared to breathe the same air. In person! I don’t typically use exclamation points, but I feel the previous sentence warrants some excitement.

Michael Donahue, our inimitable food and party writer, author of the popular “We Saw You” column, made the mistake of saying he would see everyone at next week’s meeting — on Tuesday. I corrected him, but he somehow planted that little bit of misinformation in everyone’s brain, where it took root and bore poisoned fruit.

Why would we meet on Tuesday morning — before the issue has gone to press? It makes no logical sense and flies in the face of a Flyer editorial tradition that long predates my time with this estimable publication. Nonetheless, a third of the staff remembered and seemed to take as gospel Donahue’s slip of the tongue.

I spent the last week fielding emails, texts, and in-person(!) questions about our untimely Tuesday meeting.

My intention here isn’t to tease my editorial staff — well, not only to tease them — but to point out in practice something that has been clearly demonstrated in studies. Gossip, rumors, and misinformation travel much faster than proven fact.

After an analysis of 126,000 rumors spread on Twitter over a period of 11 years, a 2018 study by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that false news travels more quickly and reaches more people than true news. Rumors and false news were found to be 70 percent more likely to be retweeted and reached people up to six times faster than actual news. Of course, this study is limited to stories spread on Twitter, but what is the bird app if not society’s rumor mill?

Of course, I am once again referring to the propagation of vaccine-related misinformation online. (I don’t want to talk about it anymore, folks, but for the moment it seems to be one of the more immediate dangers disproportionately affecting our region. We’re a hot spot again, one of the top five states for increases in case counts.) But I’m not just thinking of vaccine and coronavirus misinformation.

There’s also the Big Lie, the belief that the most recent presidential election was stolen, and all of the dozens of smaller lies it’s spawned. There’s a crisis at the southern border. President Joe Biden will soon give the signal to the Chinese army (currently hidden in Canada) to invade. Or, as Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted on Monday, President Biden is using his political power to silence his opponents. Well, Marsha, he’s doing a downright terrible job of it if that tweet is still up. All of this — these flurries of fearmongering tweets and email blasts and news spots, the needless trips to inspect the troops at the border, this grandstanding — serves only to distract from real issues affecting real people. Our neighbors and friends and family and coworkers aren’t being served by trips to the border between Texas and Mexico. I’m much more concerned with the bridge that spans the border between Tennessee and Arkansas, thank you. Or with the way certain county borderlines seem to demarkate a dramatic difference in vaccination levels.

Disinformation is deadly. I’m not up in arms about a difference of opinion, but spreading patently false information for political credit is another thing entirely. “Almost all the patients that get admitted to the hospital and admitted to me in the intensive care unit are unvaccinated patients,” Dr. Todd Rice, the director of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s COVID-19 unit, told Nashville’s WKRN last week.

I wish we could get past all this. It’s like we have our own 21st century version of Vichy France, with outposts in most communities in every state, remotely governed from Mar-a-Lago. (And yes, I am aware of all the xenophobic, authoritarian, and Nazi-collaborator connotations of my reference to Vichy France. Can you honestly say it doesn’t fit?)

Look, there are no Chinese troops stationed in Canada waiting on an order from an American president to give them the signal to invade and subjugate Tennesseans. The level of coordination that would take is, put simply, beyond the realm of possibility. If anyone is that put together, it flies in the face of the evidence of every meeting I’ve ever tried to schedule.

See you next Wednesday.

Categories
News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Honoré, Different Memphis, and Memphis Bridge Crack

A roundup of Memphis on the World Wide Web.

The red stairs

Utah-based guitar string and accessory manufacturer, Black Harbor Sound, posted an announcement, featuring Memphis-based band Honoré astride a familiar set of red stairs, to Instagram last week. The guitar company was welcoming Honoré to their roster of endorsed artists with a shot of the frequently photographed stairs inside Crosstown Concourse. 

Memphis is Different

A hilarious tweet from @panduh__ said, “Memphis is DIFFERENT different.” The tweet showed a screenshot of several messages from a DoorDash delivery person who was picking up from the Happy Mexican.

“Aye, bruh,” the message reads. “They said they can’t make yo food cuz they chefs arguin. They said cancel the order.”

Cracking up

Memphis Bridge Crack, the official unofficial Twitter account of the crack in the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, has kept the comedy flowing as strong as the waters below it.

For example, on a tweet from a Wall Street Journal story that noted “how one failed bridge in Memphis is costing business,” the Crack commented, “Ahem. I think you mean one *failed inspection team.* I didn’t do any of this myself.”

Categories
News Blog News Feature

MEMernet: Majestic Grille Tweeted by the White House

(Credit: The White House/Twitter)

On Tuesday, the White House (yes, that one) tweeted examples of how the closure of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge, which it just called “the Mississippi River bridge,” was hurting the area economy.

In a five-part tweet, the White House featured quotes from West Memphis Mayor Marco McClendon, a dentist, a business owner, and it noted that revenues at Southland Casino Racing were down 33 percent since May.

One tweet featured Patrick Reilly, co-owner and chef at The Majestic Grille Downtown.

The restaurant responded with a Facebook post that reads, “thanks for shining a light … on the struggles we’re facing due to the I-40 bridge closure. Not only are our [Arkansas] guests canceling reservations, vendor deliveries are delayed and staff can’t get to and from work. All this on top of massive revenue loss from COVID. It’s time to pass President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Plan!”

Credit: The Majestic Grille/Facebook