Sweden’s Citizen Social Media Stunt Backfires

Sweden’s Citizen Social Media Stunt Backfires


Top meatball and lingenberry exporting country Sweden has pioneered a new stunt in social media democracy, each week granting one arbitrary citizen the proverbial keys to kingdom, by which I mean the account info for the national Twitter account @Sweden.

This week brings us Sonja: “Holy mother of two. Grew up side by side with awesome nature. 27 years old. This is exciting.”

And this holy mother of two brings us questions about Jews. True, the Jewish population in Sweden is rather minimal (18,000 out of a population of 9-million Swedes, says one source). But come on. After Henry Blodget’s anti-semitic Business Insider inquiry, you’d think the obtuse Judaism questions would be tabled for minute.

Not so!

Poor Sonja. She clearly meant no harm. But Twitter, as Twitter is wont to do, went wild over the whole thing.

@Sweden/Sonja, to her credit, seems to have been mostly questioning the roots of anti-semitism from a maybe naive, but wholly innocent place. Again, unlike Blodget.

Still, when you’re clearly working with a language barrier, and you have a megaphone out to the entire internet-equipped globe, maybe skip the circumcisions subject. Ja?


[NYT]


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