Ordinary Time

In the course of my daily rummaging through Twitter I saw a strange take: GameStop didn’t matter because it wasn’t still everything. Because the stock wasn’t still in infinite bubble mode the story was over and because the story moved to a new phase that means it “didn’t matter” in the first place. This seems like an absolutely goofy take to me as I have talked with dozens of people personally involved in the story through their efforts to lift the stock to the moon.

Then it hit me — for some people now the only story that mattered was the one that could never end. It warmed up in Texas, the story must be over there too. It didn’t used to be this way.

Never Stop.

Never Stop Not Stopping

What is striking is that in the past news stories came and went all the time. Charles Cooper, in an insightful article, early in the Tea Party, situated the movement in the context of Karl Rove’s temporal strategy, which was famously tied to a constantly shifting slate of issues. Cooper’s core assumption is that some small issues come and go regularly (thus the move to simply wait out issues or add more) and that major issues might have more long term salience.

As much as the world of Twitter would like to be “not surprised” by any changes that ever happen, changes are real and do happen. Anything less than omniscience is reason for ridicule. Winning the affective logic…