{"id":4714,"date":"2020-04-04T18:34:39","date_gmt":"2020-04-04T23:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=4714"},"modified":"2020-10-13T18:49:02","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T23:49:02","slug":"if-i-used-twitter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/?p=4714","title":{"rendered":"If I used Twitter&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m thinking of writing a novel where human civilization is threatened by a global pandemic, and is then almost singlehandedly rescued by one man &#8230; a man who reigned for decades as the world\u2019s prototypical ruthless and arrogant tech billionaire, but who was then transformed by the love of his wife.  That is, <em>if<\/em> the billionaire can make it past government regulators as evil as they are stupid.  I need some advice: how can I make my storyline a bit subtler, so critics don\u2019t laugh it off as some immature nerd fantasy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><span class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-red-color\">Updates (April 5):<\/span><\/strong> Thanks to several commenters for emphasizing that the wife needs to be a central character here: I agree!  The other thing is, I don&#8217;t want Fox News cheering my novel for its <em>Atlas Shrugged<\/em> vibe.  So maybe the pandemic is only surging out of control in the US because of the incompetence of a Republican president?  I don&#8217;t want to go ridiculously overboard, but like, maybe the president is some thuggish conman with the diction of a 5-year-old, who the deluded Republicans cheer anyway?  And maybe he&#8217;s also a Bible-thumping fundamentalist?  OK, that&#8217;s too much, so maybe the fundamentalist is like the <em>vice<\/em> president or something, and he gets put in charge of the pandemic response and then sets about muzzling the scientists?  As I said, I really need advice on making the messages subtler.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m thinking of writing a novel where human civilization is threatened by a global pandemic, and is then almost singlehandedly rescued by one man &#8230; a man who reigned for decades as the world\u2019s prototypical ruthless and arrogant tech billionaire, but who was then transformed by the love of his wife. That is, if the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[42,3,16,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obviously-im-not-defending-aaronson","category-procrastination","category-rage-against-doofosity","category-the-fate-of-humanity"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4714"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4718,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4714\/revisions\/4718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scottaaronson.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}