Prevention Is Better Than Cure
Twitter: Trump’s Figma
Content overload isn’t always a bad thing. For instance, look at Twitter — you go offline for three hours and come back to thousands of tweets. In most cases, people would feel overwhelmed and leave. Twitter users however, doomscroll then refresh the app in search for more. From breaking news to memes, there’s always a push that drives us to retweet.
For those who aren’t familiar, Twitter is a microblogging social media platform where you can basically talk to yourself and have the whole world watching. But not to fear, privacy settings exist so you can protect your tweets. If not, allow anyone and everyone to share your thoughts.
One of the most “notable” Twitter users was the first American president since 1932 to lose reelection, the House, and the Senate — Donald J. Trump. That’s history! Believe it or not, losing all three isn’t such an easy thing to do. He meant business and he made sure to make it known. On June 16th, 2015 Trump formally announced his candidacy at the Trump Tower in New York City. This caused a divide within American politics. Even if we didn’t know it then, we surely know it now. His carefully curated strategy to the Oval Office was efficient and on-brand:
- Come out of the womb with a full head of hair
- Receive “a very small amount of money” of $1 million from thy father
- Make a few phone calls
- Tweet 400 times a day
- Play golf
It took blood, sweat, and tears but the hard work finally paid off on November 8th, 2016 when he was elected the 45th president of the United States. Since then, Trump has become an international superstar of nepotism and unlawful disorder. This man is no joke.
In all seriousness, I don’t believe Trump would have established such influence if it weren’t for social media. Twitter was his favourite app. He tweeted like an angry child blowing something out of proportion. (I can say this because I too have been there. The only difference is that I was a kid and Trump’s peaking 80. Yikes.) A group of people out there really thought it was a good idea to vote for a delusional narcissistic wh*te supremacy-condoning baby for the most powerful position in government. I don’t know about you but that makes me feel more than just a tad bit uncomfortable.
Twitter was his Figma, his go-to tool that he utilized to articulate his 280 character mind vomit to shape his vision of what America “should” be… to his 88 million followers. Don’t get me wrong, following and interacting with someone doesn’t equal to belief. I mean, he’s not just a politician — he’s also a celebrity and online? Entertaining.
The words of Trump were undeniably moving. Everyone, including the media, both online and offline, experienced some sort of internal trigger. After every tweet, there was always a resonating feeling. It was never peace. Whoever you might be, whatever you might believe in, or where you are in the world, his words always managed to leave an impact.
A number of times, what drives us to share things isn’t because we agree but because of something that derives deeper in our subconscious. This cycle has been going on for years and is a reason that tensions escalated to the point of violence at the U.S. Capitol riot, six days into the new year.
By nature, feelings are powerful and have the ability to encourage us to share our views and act. In user experience, we acknowledge that the ability to make people feel at any scale is an incredibly powerful thing — positive or could be better. However on a large scale, it could potentially be threatening.
When Twitter disabled the retweet feature for Trump’s announcement video, “condemning” the violence but praising the perpetrators, people really began to see how much division his rhetoric was causing. Other platforms such as Facebook and YouTube shortly began taking down the video alongside news channels.
The power of restricting ill-intentioned figures like Trump from tools that could be used as weapons for disorder and sedition is a reminder. As creatives, developers, UX/UI designers, or whatever you might be, we must always keep in mind that we have an important role to play in the future that is becoming. The world that we live in is bigger than ourselves and the apps and tools that we create have an impact on how people navigate their lives. As unfortunate as the recent events might be, this is an opportunity, a moment we should learn from.
Since then, Trump has been banned from Twitter, Facebook, TikTok (funny how they banned him before he could ban them 🙊), Reddit, Pinterest, and many more.
