>> ,If you're a lefty on social media, you might have noticed that for some time now
Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has not been spending much time
on social media, which you know kind of sucks in a variety of ways. She's a very good advocate for
the issues she supports and the values she holds.
So not having her there has, has heard a little bit, but there apparently is a good reason. And
it is not tied to the fact that she had Covid at the beginning of this year. In fact on,
I believe this was on instagram. She explained why she has been gone for a bit here.
Is that video? >> That's so funny
that you bring it up. Yeah, when I got Covid, I turned off all my devices, which means I wasn't
really on social media that much or anything like that. And I found that when I went to
open twitter up again, it just like wasn't really making me.
So I mean literally I would go to open the app and I almost felt like anxious people like kind of
fight and gossip and all this other stuff so much. But, and there's a lot of negativity on there, but
I'll be back, don't worry. Okay, so she said she'll be back, we have no idea when.
So it was tied initially to her being away and she got the experience that usually you have to sort
of intentionally set out for yourself, which is purposefully not being on for a while. She just
happened to not be on for a while because she was sick. Sometimes people will go away on a trip
and then realized when they come back, I wasn't on social media for awhile.
Isn't that different? And so much of the experience of being on social media
at all times becomes normalized, just that you will expose yourself to whatever crazy
thing a person wants to inflict on you and just constant negativity, it's totally true.
And so when you take a bit of time away that you it becomes so clear.
And so I sort of get what she's saying, logging back on willingly after weeks of not getting
constant death threats and sexual comments and unfair criticisms and bad faith attacks.
I can see why that would be appealing. I mean, they're literally like let alone
there's the trolls obviously and there's the right wingers, there's all of that baked in insanity.
But there's also been over the past year or two people, who would formally have
identified as the left, some might still be claiming that whose entire life and career
is attacking her and people like her on a daily basis. So
we're just getting attacked from all sides, seemingly ostensibly all sides.
I don't know what it feels at some point, like what's the point?
And of course that's the goal of all of this, of the trolls, of the right wingers,
of the post left grifters or whatever it is to marginalize you and minimize you
to drive you away. And as I said in the intro, she's a very effective advocate.
They don't want her to be an effective advocate, they don't want her
motivating people and inspiring others to follow her example by running for office when they're
obviously so many obstacles against you. They don't want that, they want to drive you away,
they don't want her there, they don't want Ilhan Omar, they don't want any of that.
And so on that level it is it's unfortunate to see it that it is
affecting her and I know myself I get not 1% of the hate that she does. But I feel
that sometimes I know many people who work at TYT start to wonder
what the point of being on there is when you are exposing yourself to so much negativity.
Obviously it is not limited just to that
there are great things and there are great people on those platforms and you want to use it again
to advocate for issues and all of that. But I do wonder whether she will come back in the same way.
And I also wonder this is total speculation for the future.
But she has previously talked about the fact that people's assumption that she would be like most
politicians. And just this is my life for the rest of my life, I will be in politics either
staying at this level for 30 years. Or moving up and running for senator for president, whatever
is by no means a foregone conclusion that she might not want to be in politics forever.
And that might be sort of driven by the same sort of negativity and toxicity that happens on social
media. We'll have to see she gets to make her own decisions desperately need good politicians
on the left. We have so few, you can basically count them on two hands
that I would hate to see her driven away in that way.