Twitter C/D

because it's morning time and i'm procrastinating, here is a style guide/grammar/twitter/AITA thing that came up overnight for me. it all started with this tweet:

Eric Trump says “his father will leave the presidency with a powerful brand backed by millions of voters who will follow him “to the ends of the Earth”...he created the greatest political movement in American history and his opportunities are endless.” https://t.co/i0ZUBfwxp2

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) January 13, 2021

I didn't think too much of it, but saw a couple people commenting about the "Brand" part of it. Eric Trump apparently said his "father will leave the presidency with a powerful brand". Which was such an asshole thing to say that i had to go read the original article:

NEW YORK (AP) — The PGA canceled its tournament at his golf course. Banks say they won’t lend to him anymore. New York City is looking to end his contract to operate the Central Park skating rink.

Hits to President Donald Trump’s business empire since the deadly riots at the U.S. Capitol are part of a liberal “cancel culture,” his son, Eric, told The Associated Press on Tuesday, saying his father will leave the presidency with a powerful brand backed by millions of voters who will follow him “to the ends of the Earth.”

SNIP-other things that are boring-SNIP

...“You have a man who would get followed to the ends of the Earth by a hundred million Americans,” Eric Trump said. “He created the greatest political movement in American history and his opportunities are endless.”

reviewing the article, i noticed that trump never said "brand". he did insinuate that, and it's fair to paraphrase him as talking about the trump brand. but Begnaud put that part in quotes, as if Eric Trump said that. and then, since most people don't read beyond the headline/twitter summary, the part that stood out to them was "brand". lots of this stuff:

"A powerful brand" pic.twitter.com/pwA8cGBbvB

— trish (@omerta22PL) January 13, 2021

not a huge deal, but i thought that was misleading, so i put on my most annoying, pedantic, please-go-away-myself voice i could possibly muster, and typed

That's not right. The part you're quoting is not what Eric Trump said, in quotes, in the article. You're quoting him for the part that the writer wrote. I have no doubt that it's materially accurate, I'm just saying - please don't quote things that aren't quotes.

— Z_tbd (@weinventyou) January 13, 2021

but THEN it turns out that

He's quoting the writer, not the actual interview. That's standard when retweeting an article to distinguish between what's said in the article from the retweeter's interpretation of what was said. It's a valid quote.

— GreenGenii 🍀 (@GreenGenii) January 13, 2021

&

Please read....oh, just ANY style manual, Z_tbd.

— Patrick *Black Lives Matter* (@PennGos) January 13, 2021

----

so anyway, don't worry i don't care much about this! i was drunk last night and being pedantic, and then this morning i'm seeing these replies and it's more like a question for Grammar Girl or whatever. but i'm just curious, is this how you all use quotes

i just want to go back to the original tweet and underline the parts of it that are direct quotes from Eric Trump:

Eric Trump says “his father will leave the presidency with a powerful brand backed by millions of voters who will follow him “to the ends of the Earth”...he created the greatest political movement in American history and his opportunities are endless.”

and a related question: if this is ok or acceptable (on twitter or elsewhere), how do you delineate which part is the paraphrased part vs the direct quote, if they're both in quotes? i guess just go to the original article and figure it out? maybe that's the twitter compromise

I don't see their point - if he's quote-paraphrasing the writer then the "Eric Trump says" part should be in quotes too to make at least slightly clear the distinction.

it's bad use of quotes imo

yeah i mean theres rules and whatnot but the point of it all is to be clear which the original tweet clearly isnt

eric trump says "eric trump didnt not say this"

original tweet is misleading and its use of quotes is incoherent, YNTA

yeah that's quotes within quotes in a misleading way, it seems like Eric is quoting someone else with 'to the ends of the earth' there.

Not interested in Human leg pic.twitter.com/PLmbhxiECh

— the goat of all time (@bobby) January 24, 2021

Tweetbot 6 is out. Good to see it getting some new features, glad to throw them a few bucks to get a good chronological timeline and a few new features

I’m going INSANE!! The first image is the tweets she is talking about!!!! pic.twitter.com/TdIWzPHjCZ

— Fairy Gothmother, MD (@jenny2x4) January 31, 2021

Bin Laden and Gary Glitter trending 🤔

Twitter sent my lockscreen a notification yesterday asking me if I wanted to follow a trending topic: The Sopranos

wtf

i mean when have I ever evinced an interest in this 20-year-old television show??

It's a good show!

xps it’s not targeted at you specifically it’s because a lot of people have been talking about it. You can disable the notification in settings

have a lot of people really been talking about the sopranos??

delete the app imo

there was a dumb tweet a couple of weeks ago comparing it to sex & the city, and everyone was dunking on it

lol twitter really nailing it huh

prequel movie coming as well (deleted my app so don’t know if that’s why it’s trending though).

maybe it’s that - it felt so out of the blue my first assumption was that it was paid promotion

theres been pretty steady sopranos discourse for months at least, hadnt considered that it might be unusual until now lol

I'd feel very seen by social media if it was inviting me to follow trending topic: the hywel bennett scene from tinker tailor

i would prefer a twitter notification about the tenors

just kill me now please

Stella Artois
@StellaArtois
Each of us has 2.5 billion heartbeats in a lifetime, which makes you a heartbeat billionaire. Learn how to invest them with the help of our friend @LennyKravitz
.

#InvestYourHeartbeats

lmao

just kill me now please

now now, you don't wanna spend all your heartbeats at once

i just spent a bit too long trying to figure out how many heartbeats drinking stella will cost you, both in terms of the time spent drinking it as well as the lowered life expectancy

i found that drinking stella will actually remove 2.3 billion of those heartbeats

I don't care what you say.
You can give it away

#sopranosdiscourse

happy anniversary

Does anyone think global warming is a good thing? I love Lady Gaga. I think she's a really interesting artist.

— Britney Spears (@britneyspears) February 10, 2011

One of the the greatest

i have not seen that before. it's a masterpiece isn't it.

I checked out the account that @jenny2x4 is complaining about and it's all Bible study and Jen Psaki thirst tweets and then three days ago "did u know China is keeping the Uighur minority in camps, why isn't anybody doing anything about this," ah, youth

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-twitter-ban-wont-be-lifted-if-runs-president-again-2021-2

Having fun today getting both of my accounts blocked by Andrew Doyle, just the thought that I've maybe ruined two minutes of his day kind of warms the heart

I have never even heard of Andrew Doyle and I just learned I have been blocked by him.

He seems to have blocked every academic in the world, somehow, this may include you.

I've been blocked by him even though I'm not an academic

He hadn't blocked me until shortly after I sent this to him

If you want to preemptively block people who might possibly one day call you a tedious grifter with two or three crap jokes which you repeat ad nauseam, that's absolutely your right, but why not just block absolutely everyone to be on the safe side?

— Centuries of Sound (@Centuries_Sound) February 14, 2021

weird how those who go on about free speech being an absolute right are the first to take their ball home when they receive some mild ribbing

Oh, twitterpaws

Twitter announces paid Super Follows to let you charge for tweets https://t.co/nw281nPJ4P pic.twitter.com/WHPGmYTK3j

— The Verge (@verge) February 25, 2021

I can see why, instead of having everyone link to patreon in their bio, they're patreoning their own platform now tbh, and no doubt taking a piece of the pie. Years ago a moderately famous court reporter in the Netherlands - who tweets all day following court cases - did the same, but old-skool: he created a separate, locked twitter account and charged followers 2 or 3 euros a month. He'd keep check of his paid followers in an xls. Think he had about 400, 500 paid followers, which made for a nice extra income I guess. He called it quits because of a new job iirc.

"Super Follows" can get tae fuck tho, godawful name.

What’s with the recent handful of celebs wanting to get rid or their verified checkmark? Paul F. Tompkins is the latest I’ve seen, but it appears to be a mini-movement thing.

this tweet, and the replies, are really something

I never had butter as a kid. Came from a big family, Mom only had margarine in the house for us kids. We put it on everything. Only she & my Dad would have butter on occasion. Now I’m sitting here, wolfing down a bunch of crackers with butter. I love butter. My mom would smile.

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) March 6, 2021

Trash food is the one legitimate boomer complaint.

We were quite broke when I was a young kid - we arrived at a middle-class lifestyle by my teens- and only had margarine at home. Have always loved bread and butter since then. Kind of relate to that tweet lol

same. i liked that tweet as well, it took me years to get with butter and then it was a sudden realisation, wtf. good bread with good butter is probably my favourite food.