Twitter and The Real Scott Morrison (TM) - Women's Agenda

Twitter and The Real Scott Morrison (TM)

There’s a pretty obvious relationship between Tony Abbott’s polling numbers and amount of bonhomie exuded by Scot Morrison. If this goes on much longer anyone in ScoMo’s immediate vicinity is going to have to wear a hazmat suit.

It’s not news that Morrison is trying to position himself as the compromise solution to Abbott’s lack of popularity and Turnbull’s excess of it, but there’s some interesting little bits of the Real Scott Morrison TM leaking out the sides.

He’s been quite active on twitter lately, after a nearly two year break, and why not? It works so very well for Turnbull, why shouldn’t it work for him?

The answer to that question is telling

Twitter is a strange beast; instant, constant, unfiltered communication with the denizens of the internet can be hilarious, weird and useful. Or it can be unbearably awkward. Guess which way Morrison is going?

Some people take to it like an extremely fit duck to a wide expanse of water. Turnbull, for instance, instinctively understood the benefit of engagement. He twinkles along, making jokes, posting train selfies, answering questions, snarking along with the rest of us and using it to spread his personal brand all over the internet. Whatever you may think of the man and his politics, it’s a masterful use of social media.

The thing about twitter though, is that it only really works as a tool of engagement if you actually engage. So politicians have to choose between using it as a mini news service – here’s a message from my PR person about what I did today – or they jump in and become a part of it. The danger in that is unwittingly revealing more about yourself than you really want to, or perhaps should.

Case in point: Morrison was, for the most part, taking the PR route – not terribly interesting publicity shots of him doing things in his shirts of varying shades of purple. Then, oops, he tried to make a joke.

Scott Morrison tweet

Hahaha. Border Force is hilarious, isn’t it? Tiny boats in rough seas. AHAHAHAHA. LOOK AUSTRALIA LOOK AT HOW MAN OF THE PEOPLE I AM WITH MY HILARIOUS JOKES.

No.

First of all, it’s twitter, so it took a space of minutes for someone to identify the photo as a) not Australian and b) not near Thursday Island.

Secondly, whichever side of politics you’re from boat arrivals Are. Not. Funny. Either they are a wave of terrorigrants coming to destroy Our Way Of Life, or they are a sea of human tragedy, fleeing horrors to be brutalised by our government. Morrison himself spent far too much effort polarising that debate to be able to make a joke of it now.

Thirdly, jokes about disadvantaged groups work when the butt of the joke are the reactions of the privileged. If the subject of your joke is the disadvantage itself, it’s not a joke, it’s an expression of your utter incomprehension of the privilege you have.

If we needed any clue where this “joke” fell on that scale, Morrison followed his hilarious Border Force joke by doubling down with the standard response from anyone called on stupid, insensitive or cruel comments.

scott morrison tweet 2

Look, it’s just one tweet and, as much time as I spend on twitter, I do understand that taking it too seriously is a mistake. That way lies madness.

But I also know that twitter does work as a microcosm of society. The subtleties of what we say, how we say it, who we interact with and why play out in a way that reveals much more of who we really are than we think it does.

Morrison will probably go back to the safer PR stance on twitter after this, and twitter will continue to cackle, gibber and moan in his absence. But it was an illuminating moment from one of the slightly overpopulated club of potential future Prime Ministers.

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