How the Tories used Comic Sans to trigger 'centrist Twitter' into spreading their propaganda for them

Regular readers will be all-too-familiar with my recurring complaint that mainstream media pundits, self-appointed 'centrists' (orthodox neoliberals), and the Twitter Blue tick brigade are shockingly inept at holding the Tory government to account, and the absurd fact that the font Comic Sans is trending on Twitter is the most compelling piece of proof yet.

When the Tories put out a Tweet written in Comic Sans, it should have been blindingly obvious to everyone that they were banking on a load of hate shares whining about the use of this unpopular font in order to subversively spread their utterly disingenuous "get Brexit done" propaganda trope all over social media.

Little enough has been done to combat this absurdly backwards idea that rushing approval of the Withdrawal Agreement phase of Brexit is akin to getting Brexit done and dusted, but now "centrists" are actually sharing it in order to complain about the font it's written in!

Anyone with the most basic grasp on the actual process understands that the Withdrawal Agreement is just step one in a multi-step process, and furthermore, that if this initial step is botched, it makes the following phases even more complex and time-consuming to deal with.

But instead of aiming their fire at the central Tory deceit that rushing the initial phase is akin to completing the whole process, 'centrist Twitter' and even Remain Ultras like Ian Dunt decided to actively amplify the deceit in order to take aim at the font it was presented in.

Yes some political commentators had the sense to see the ploy for what it was, with Matt Turner and Jim Waterson both identifying and describing the ploy to their followers.

Matt came from the successful independent media site Evolve Politics, and Jim was one of the tiny minority of journalists to clock the crucial role social media virality was playing during the 2017 General Election, so it's little surprise that they have the social media awareness to actually spot what's going on.

Shamefully plenty of other social media commentators uncritically amplified the Tory Brexit deceit in order to have a dig at them for using Comic Sans, including the usually reliable and fairly impartial Election Maps UK Twitter account. I don't recall them having ever retweeted partisan party political propaganda before, but the comic sans bait was enough to trigger them into amplifying disgracefully misleading Tory propaganda.

As far as I'm concerned one of the absolute basics of social media literacy is to not retweet or share political lies, and if it is absolutely necessary to quote something, to do it in the form of a screenshot with annotations in order to clearly critique the lie.

But this Comic Sans thing is even worse than the all-too-common practice of actively amplifying political lies in order to criticise them, because the chosen criticism is so wildly misplaced.

Dunt and his ilk didn't even mention the fact that the central claim in the Comic Sans Tory statement was a grotesque misrepresentation of reality, because they were too busy fussing over the presentation!

People often complain about presentation taking precedence over policy in the political sphere, but this debacle illustrates another problem. So many of our political commentators these days are so obsessed with presentation that they'll endlessly fixate on trivialities like the font a statement was written in, or whether Johnson bothered to sign the extension letter, rather than the crucial core details - the central claim is a grotesque misrepresentation of reality, and the fact that Johnson had said he'd "rather die in a ditch" than send the extension letter that he ended up sending.

These people are supposed to be holding the Tories to account, rather than falling for their tricks and misdirection tactics like a bunch of hopelessly gullible rubes.

And the most worrying thing is that a lot of these absolute dupes have positioned themselves as the champions of the Brexit-sceptic movement.

But if these people are so intensely credulous and easily played that they can be tricked into uncritically amplifying Tory pro-Brexit propaganda, just because it's written in a notoriously naff font, how the absolute hell are they actually going to win this 'another roll of the dice' referendum they seem to want so much?

Our nation's future teeters on the cliff edge of a disastrous Tory-administered Brexit meltdown, and the people who should be holding the government to account are too busy railing against a god-damned font to actually notice that they're actively amplifying the bullshit Tory propaganda that they should be trying to criticise and critique.

If these people really are our Brexit-saviours, we might as well accept that we're well and truly doomed hadn't we?

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