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What We Can Learn: Even if politicians choose to stay hands off and let their staffers handle the day-to-day business of tweeting—thus avoiding any Ed Balls–esque snafus—it makes total sense that a politician might want to know things like what a hashtag is, or where on the screen their profile photo might appear. Though it can seem corny to acknowledge it, social media has democratized online communications and given elected officials and other public figures a direct line to the public. Sometimes this means kids tweet "Fuck me daddy" at the Pope, but sometimes it can be used for important reasons, and politicians should understand the rudiments of the online world.Ed Balls
— Ed Balls (@edballs)April 28, 2011
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Case Study: There's no way of getting around it: This is an incredibly bad tweet. In addition to inadvertently trivializing what is an extremely serious issue for millions of young people, the whole thing had an air of Steve Buscemi on 30 Rock trying to trick teenagers into thinking he's one of them.What We Can Learn: As tempting as it might be to try to buddy up to the youth by using emoji, saying your financial bailout plan makes you "the plug," or that your foreign policy is as good as "shower time, Adderall, a glass of whiskey, and Diesel jeans," young people on Twitter do not want a cool friend. They are not retweeting Toronto City Councilman Norm Kelly (a.k.a. @norm) because they have suddenly decided he is awesome. They are retweeting him because the anachronism of an old man tweeting about man buns and pretending to like Drake is funny. Politicians deal with serious stuff, and it's OK for them to be serious rather than hip, jokey, and ironic. Even if it gets attention in the short term, in the long term stuff like this can only make you look like a fool.Follow Drew on Twitter.How does your student loan debt make you feel? Tell us in 3 emojis or less.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton)August 12, 2015
