I know it’s sick, but I look forward to seeing what new absurdities are waiting for me each day on the internet. And since the beginning, the sidebar has been-at its very best-no more than a curiosity. Since the beginning, this silly little sidebar has been the cause of tension and anxiety among users-those who need to see Justin Bieber’s new single represented in the space, those who decidedly do not need to see that #WhiteLivesMatter, and those, like the former president of the United States, who feel that trending topics are actually illegal. Not just because doing so would make the world a better place, but also because I should really not waste any more of my time on Earth trying to understand what is going on with a bunch of posts from a bunch of people who themselves have no idea what is going on, or who are pretending not to for attention. I am not even close to being the first person to point out the problems that they cause in May, for example, the writer Ryan Broderick called trending topics “ an endless pit of zero stakes anger.” But I do need to add: Twitter should get rid of its Trending sidebar, once and for all. Since then, trending topics have become a factor in harassment campaigns, election disinformation, and the amplification of extremism. ![]() ![]() This is a common sight in the “Trending” sidebar, which was built in Twitter’s early days to show off a list of topics that had caused a sudden spike in interest on the platform. The idea that American military service dogs had been abandoned in Afghanistan was erroneous and easily debunked, so besides being cringeworthy, these tweets were also misinformation. “Sparky stands in solidarity with every service dog,” wrote New York Representative Claudia Tenney. Soon, PETA was involved, and so were a bunch of politicians. ![]() “Let’s get it trending.” Of course, random people obliged, because random people like nothing more than to tweet blurry pictures of their pets with captions such as “Mocha and Macey sending prayers of comfort and safety to those brave service dogs!” A Twitter user called Cheesesteak, whose bio says he owns four cats, shared a picture of a dog with a soldier and wrote, “There is NO CREATURE on this EARTH who is more NOBEL and has MORE HONOR and we ABANDONED THEM TO OUR NATIONAL SHAME.” OH MY GOD. Earlier that day, the alt-right personality Jack Posobiec had tweeted, “Today I am launching the #NoPawsLeftBehind Campaign,” and asked people to post photos of their dogs “in solidarity with the service dogs left behind in Afghanistan.” “Use the hashtag,” he wrote. Last Tuesday, I glanced at the “What’s happening” sidebar on Twitter and saw that nearly 32,000 people were tweeting about this topic therefore, it was “trending.” A description of the trend, presented just beneath the hashtag, explained that it was “commemorating the service dogs left behind following the withdrawal of American troops in Afghanistan.”Ĭlicking through the hashtag, I found a slightly more irritating story.
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