"HELP! Donald Trump has infected my mind and I can't get him out!!!"
That should have been the title of Nick Bilton's article in the December 11 Vanity Fair. Instead his article is titled WILL DONALD TRUMP TAKE FACEBOOK AND TWITTER DOWN WITH HIM? even though he makes virtually no case for this premise. In fact it is practically invisible as Bilton uses that fake premise which he almost totally ignores to launch into a rant about Trump being obsessed with himself while revealing that it is Bilton himself who is obsessed by Trump. As if to emphasize the point, he even added in the video below in which the supposed takedown of Facebook and Twitter is totally absent leaving only Bilton's obsession with You-Know-Who.
I’ve come to realize that while Trump probably won’t go down in traditional forms of ignominy, he might face a worse fate. And that destiny is already beginning to take its course. Trump, it seems, is at the very beginning of becoming irrelevant. Sure, he's still the most-talked about person on Earth, but it is ebbing. There have even been moments when Trump’s name wasn’t on the front page of The New York Times. (Lord knows, to his consternation, he was not Time’s person of the year.) And while there was a point in time when the most widely read, e-mailed, and shared stories at news outlets around the Web were almost all Trump-related, they are increasingly about other topics, like Potato Latke recipes and why your grumpy teenager doesn’t want to talk to you. If you look right now on Twitter, he’s curiously not among the glFoobal-trending topics. (Though he could be tomorrow.) Part of that is because Trump’s eccentric behavior is becoming normalized. But it’s also because we’re learning to tune him out.
Have no fear. Folks like the Trump-obsessed Nick Bilton are sure to keep his name at the forefront since he is infecting all liberal thoughts 24/7 as demonstrated by this very article.
I know that by writing this column, I’m contributing to the problem. By reading it, you are, too. But that’s O.K., because this particular story has a happy ending. Or at least, it will one day. I don’t believe the Russia investigation will make its way to Trump. I doubt very much that Trump will be impeached for obstruction of justice, treason, or because his aides (and possibly even relatives) have ties to the Kremlin. But there’s a pattern I’ve started to see in his narcissism that is more likely to undercut him. And it won’t simply befall him. It might even deal a considerable blow to the companies—like Twitter and Facebook; the Daily Mail, InfoWars, and Fox News—who have taken advantage of his attention-seeking for their own gain. And that, as the folks in Silicon Valley like to say, truly will make the world a better place.
In case you missed it, he actually made an almost invisible case for Twitter and Facebook going down with Trump in that paragraph. He will make another such attempt but it will be equally as lame:
Chamath Palihapitiya, the former Facebook executive, noted this week that our reliance on these platforms was “ripping apart society.” Sean Parker, who also ran Facebook, has publicly offered the same sentiment. Some former Twitter employees I know have said privately that they no longer use the service, and see it as a danger to democracy, and that Trump will be its downfall. It’s easy to forget that many of these companies, which occupy so much mental space in our lives, didn’t exist 20 years ago, and may be gone 20 years from now. Politics change just as quickly.
And there you have it, folks. You probably didn't see it but that was Bilton's second, and final, bit of evidence as to why Trump will cause the downfall of Facebook and Twitter. See, it is because some (obviously liberal) former Twitter employees have that opinion. Case closed...in Bilton's mind.
Let us now drop that dopey premise as quickly as Bilton did and just enjoy his entertaining Trump obsession:
That platform, which itself was teetering at the time, has made Trump the most talked about human being on the planet, and the reward is that Twitter has become one of the most talked about companies on Earth. Trump is it's master, and can still wield Twitter to somehow shock and embarrass America in 140 280 characters. He still has an uncanny ability to generate headlines by picking the most infantile fights imaginable. And while his omnipresent name is still on the front page of daily newspapers around the world, there are increasingly more days that it is not. There are times you can turn on cable news, or the nightly talk shows, and see pundits and comedians talking about something other than you-know-who. And sure, those moments are fleeting and far-between. But they are happening now for the first time in the past two years, and they make us all feel better, and Trump worse.
Ah! Those rare fleeting moments not totally consumed by thoughts of Trump. However, I think Bilton is fibbing. Most likely his first thought when he wakes up is about Trump and his final thought as he drifts off to sleep is also about Trump. Oh, and also every waking moment in between.
One day, maybe three years from now, maybe (God forbid) seven, Trump will no longer be president. Someone else will enter that office, and the things they say will capture headlines, and they will be the person we’ll talk about at the dinner table, or with our Uber driver. And Donald Trump will cease to be the center of the attention universe. He’ll turn on the television and it won’t be him they are talking about. It will be another president. He’ll pick up the paper and there will be someone else’s name in the headlines. Trump’s brother was an alcoholic, his father a workaholic, and Trump is nothing more than a narcissist who is addicted to himself. When that drug is taken away from him, as it inevitably will be, it will destroy him. And nothing gives me a larger sense of relief than knowing at the end of his life, he’ll be irrelevant, and that he’ll know that, too.
