Best-selling author and horror extraordinaire Stephen King has joined the ever expanding and not-so-exclusive club of Twitter users who have been blocked by Donald Trump.
Yes. You read that right. But go ahead and read it again a couple of times, because it just gets funnier each time you do.
King woke up to this truly “tragic” development Tuesday morning, and immediately alerted his own followers, because obviously:
Trump has blocked me from reading his tweets. I may have to kill myself.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) June 13, 2017
Aaaand was still pretty bummed about it the next day:
Blocked! Condemned to an existential wasteland of Trumplessness!
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) June 14, 2017
The move doesn’t come as much of a surprise; the Commander in Chief has proven time and time again that he cannot stand a joke made at his own expense, so it makes perfect sense that he would choose to block King, who has been very vocal about 45 on social media:
No wonder Trump’s always blabbing about fake news. He is a fake president.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) May 28, 2017
Trump’s tweets in his first hundred days draw a pretty clear portrait: he’s an almost textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) May 4, 2017
I say this gently and kindly: If you voted for Trump and still think he’s doing a good job, you haven’t been paying attention.
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) April 26, 2017
It falls in perfect alignment with the behavior Trump has displayed all long. Catch wind of discord, and silence it. This is Trump Logic 101: Because if I don’t see your opinions they don’t exist, ignorance is bliss, “Blah blah blah, IIII can’tttt hearrrrr youuuu.”
Sarcasm aside, Trump’s recent Twitter tirade, in the form of binge-blocking rather than the usual 140 characters of vitriol, further proves two very frightening things we all already knew. Firstly, he has way too much time on his hands, if he can sit around sifting through negative tweets about himself and block the offenders accordingly—including the account of VoteVets.org, an organization that represents 500,000 U.S. military veterans and their families, it should be noted. Seriously. Someone just needs to secretly change his password and be done with it.
Secondly, and more alarmingly, Trump once again proves just how much he requires flattery and compliance at any and all times. He cannot handle criticism, constructive or otherwise, just as he cannot handle dissension. By surrounding himself with sycophants in both his cabinet and his Twittersphere, he continues to carefully cultivate a world in which he is always right and everyone else is a “loser.” By squashing voices of resistance—in this case, the literal “Resistance”—Trump shows the world that his “love” for this country he (bewilderingly) chose to serve only goes so far. He’ll listen if you agree. Otherwise, your words will be silenced. Today, people are calling it Orwellian, but in the future, I think we may very well be calling such behavior Trumpian.
Every time the POTUS’s Twitter account becomes a topic of discussion, a fragment of my now very fragile patriotism shrivels up and dies. It seems ridiculous to constantly be talking about it; however, it’s necessary. Trump is only the second president to serve in this new social media-colored world, Barack Obama obviously being the first. Whether we like it or not, social media has influence, and if nothing else, it throws Trump’s everyday musings, which are rife with grandiose superlatives, vague promises, suspicion of the press, generally divisive rhetoric, and now suppression of dissent, onto a global stage. And let’s be real. That’s not great.
As the latest victim of this disturbing trend, King has one main, and totally understandable concern: how, oh how, will he keep up with Trump’s going’s-on if he no longer has access to 45’s Twitter feed? Why, it’s fellow best-selling author turned political commentator J.K. Rowling to the rescue:
I still have access. I’ll DM them to you. https://t.co/MhibEYDBTg
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 13, 2017
In today’s world where everything seems wrong, authors helping authors just feels so right. Though with Rowling’s own tweets, it’s only a matter of time before the Harry Potter author gets blocked herself.
And just on a personal note, as a lowly citizen with her own Twitter account, if I ever got blocked by Trump, I would screenshot that evidence immediately and wear it as a badge of honor.