Twitter is for Twits

Twitter is going to be the force that changes the world, we keep being told. It will be the driver of revolutions which will topple governments, and it will turn small causes into world shaking events.

What was the outcome of #BringBackOurGirls? That "hashtag" was going to rescue the girls kidnapped in Nigeria, and result in the destruction of Boko Haram. It turned out to be, as Twitter causes always do, to be as effective as a rock thrown in a millpond; making a big splash, diminishing to a few ripples, and then leaving the millpond as still as before the rock was thrown. The girls are still missing, Boko Haram is still as much in business as it ever was, and in Nigeria nothing has changed in the slightest.

A new "hashtag" has replaced it on top of the follower count, celebrating the defeat of Eric Cantor, as if that trivial event was in any way going to alter the cesspool that is politics in Washington.