Trump's Twitter outage - a reminder of social rank and the dreaded loss of control

Every now and then the blogster feels like telling teens that their impression that adults mainly muddle through in life is fundamentally correct.

It is also basically true that human societies have been trying to reduce the muddling through with some degree of success.

That's why we have formal education systems, accreditation, bar and board exams, and similar structures. Yes, the blogster is aware of the fine moral and philosophical underpinnings of schooling and training, but that was apparently not why mandatory schooling was introduced on a large scale in the 1800s.

Sporadically, we are reminded that control can be lost easily, that an unremarkable, lowly individual can press a single key on a computer keyboard with worldwide ramifications.

On 11/2/2017, a Twitter employee did just that. He or she deactivated the account of "realDonaldTrump" for a few minutes.

And the former employee was offered praise, pizza, and drinks.

Ted Lieu‏Verified account @tedlieu 6h6 hours ago

Ted Lieu Retweeted Katie Couric

Dear Twitter employee who shut down Trump's Twitter: You made America feel better for 11 minutes. DM me & I will buy you a Pizza Hut pizza.

He or she was also insulted:

Blake Hounshell‏Verified account @blakehounshell 7h7 hours ago

It is shocking that some random Twitter employee could shut down the president's account. What if they instead had tweeted fake messages?

~Marietta‏ @MDavisbot 14m14 minutes ago

A disgruntled employee took Trump's twitter account down for 11 mins last night. How dare you? #TrumpDown @realDonaldTrump #MAGA

Underneath the praise and the criticism of that person's action lurk our views of the world, of how hierarchies should work, of demanding respect for a thing and the person who "owns" that thing. 

As to "random", no, that employee had the required access rights for the action he or she took. The blogster bets you its* last Susan B. dollar coin that random employees in Twitter's PR department, for example, could not do this.  Which means that the use of random signifies someone unworthy of being allowed anywhere near the sequence of data.

Whether you feel like praising or attacking the former employee, take a step back and ask yourself what your reaction says about you.

And don't forget to tell the adolescents in your life that adults largely muddle through.

* The blogster does gender neutral.

In case you wonder: The author of this shorty has worked in environments characterized by levels of control ranging from "zero" (start-up co-founder) to "yup, there are two safes you need to open in order to get a document, and I have the keys and the combo because the government knows f** all about me".