I am reminded often that what @michaelhobbes.bsky.social
tweeted in 2022 is so profoundly correct: “I think we'll look back on the last decade as a time when social media gave previously marginalized groups the ability to speak directly to elites and, as a result, elites lost their minds.” Yup.
'Elites' have always needed a veneer that makes them appear to be something other than just another human being who happened to have lucked into a specific set of circumstances which places them above everyone else in some way.
Having them accessible to the masses cracks that veneer wide open.
I think a lot about how when everyone started carrying camera phones with them everywhere we didn’t get more evidence of ghosts or aliens but of police killing Black people
Parallels long 19thC in Europe I think - explosion of literacy, pamphlets etc leading to panic and repression by monarchies, nobility (among many other factors obvs). I would love to read something tracking the elite v commons clashes from that period into current political trends
Quite a few of those elites have let their own side down. I used to have far more respect for both doctors and lawyers, for example, until certain members of their tribe came to Twitter and started sharing their unfiltered selves. It wasn't pretty.
this fetishizes social media as an agent of liberation. I think it’s more likely we look back and realize that tech doesn’t obviate politics even if it does seem to, on the surface, place voices on a horizontal plane because echo chambers and economics exist.
Reading 19th century craniologists and other race science freaks, it occurred to me that maybe their conclusions were full of holes in part because they knew they could say what they like without fear of public shaming and scorn. It wouldn't have changed them, but they would've thought twice I bet.
Yes, but a lot of people who were well respected used to have PR teams to shield them from fans. Now that they can speak unfiltered on social media, a lot of famous people are being revealed as idiots.
If someone online calls you an asshole or a sloppy little bitch, and you have the means to make a local lawmaker do something about it, or have whole police departments from multiple cities turning out to defend your honor through violence, you're an elite.
That's what happens when a society lets money determine 'elite' rather than principles, ethics, and utility.
Most of the wealthy are peasants inside. Possessed of the material resources associated with nobility and aristocracy, but utterly bereft of the mindset that defines 'noble'.
