*GASP* Lives of the digital left felt a little abandonment as MP Charlie Angus bid farewell to his followers on twitter last week. Chuck bid adieu in a final tweet, proclaiming he was finally free at last. For awhile, I found him to be the most entertaining NDP’r on the interweb’s twitt-o-sphere, because he always seemed angry about everything he tweeted about. I often pictured him in my mind yelling out his tweeted messages across the house, shaking his fist, eyes turning green and then all of the sudden morphing in the Incredible Hulk, but like an orange Hulk… The incredible Chulk, as I liked to call my conceptualized Charlie Angus, would be picking up every piece of legislation he could find and throwing it back in the face of the conservative government. Then pounding his fists down a desk ‘CHULK SMASH!’
Well the part that I hate is that Charlie was a good source of what was going on in the north and in politics in general. His home is a mere stone throw away from mine, and when you live up in the middle of nowhere its nice to see the guy from the news walking down the street every now and then, if only just to remind you, that you do in-fact live in the same country. I suppose one little twitter account doesn’t make a difference but I think it makes people more accessible and isn’t that, on some level, what we want from politicians? Especially people in the north where a single riding is spread over hundreds of kilometers.
So why did Charlie leave us? ’Angry White People.’ Not angry like him though, angry and racist people sending him personal attacks over twitter all hours of the day, even getting a message to eat shit on Christmas-eve. There of course is more to but he also elaborates on how twitter companies are using it for their own form of Slack-tivism, using an example of G.E. tweeting in response the the Attiwapaskat crisis but not offering any real help. It’s almost like the accessibility factor is reversed giving a large company the appearance of a heart and soul person that interacts with others.
Is he gone for good? Who knows! I don’t think anyone ever really leaves twitter… Paulina Gretzky only lasted a few weeks, I’ll give Charlie a month…
Chuck’s Explanation in the Huffington post
