That’ll Show ‘Em! Hasan Minhaj Deletes His Twitter on ‘The Daily Show’
Everyone who uses social media has, at some point, seen an oversharing cousin, colleague or classmate make that ubiquitous and useless post wherein they proudly announce their departure from a platform that barely noticed their presence. Now imagine how annoying the sanctimonious farewell would be if that person hosted The Daily Show.
Last night, Daily Show guest host Hasan Minhaj devoted an entire 10 minutes of his limited audition time to explaining his unique point-of-view on Twitter: “It sucks.” The former Patriot Act host broke down every gripe he has had with the platform since long before controversial CEO and Tesla “founder” Elon Musk took over this past October. “Twitter has been terrible for years because of us,” said Minhaj before quietly opening his phone, deleting the app and moving on to actual news items — just kidding, Minhaj then spent half an episode explaining what everyone who has used the internet in the last 15 years already knows.
Minhaj’s complaints about Twitter are indistinguishable from the many paragraphs that many stay-at-home parents have posted before their own overdramatic exits from the site that no one in the world actually enjoys. The Daily Show guest host touted his belief that Twitter is an echo chamber, Twitter users oversimplify complex issues and Twitter lets journalists drum up outrage over three people with 40 followers between them complaining about something mundane. In similarly shocking news, Pornhub has porn on it.
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Minhaj fit plenty of quotable quips into his farewell speech, such as when he pointed out the disparity between people who post on Twitter and people who just lurk, saying, “There are more country music stars named Luke than people who tweet.” But for all the snappy soundbites, the substance of the 10-minute diatribe is decidedly lacking for a show that pretends to be the comedic voice of anger in American news media.
When Trevor Noah replaced Jon Stewart as Daily Show host, many longtime viewers felt that the series had dulled its fangs in its coverage of the most pressing issues. Other shows attempted to fill that void for focused and passionate comedic commentary, such as Minhaj’s own Patriot Act, a show that spent entire episodes explaining a single specific issue through his lens. However, Minhaj’s 10-minute regurgitation of the same tired Twitter complaints that have appeared in every “I’m leaving Twitter” post for over a decade tells us that a Minhaj-hosted Daily Show would be less like his inquisitive and astute investigations on Patriot Act and more like the garish, internet-obsessed spectacle of James Corden’s The Late Late Show.
Minhaj closed out his outburst by canceling his Twitter account before making a reference to The Truman Show by bidding his applauding audience, “Good afternoon, good evening and good night,” before exiting the soundstage and sending The Daily Show to commercial. Just like Truman Burbank, Minhaj and anyone else who thinks that their “Goodbye Twitter” proclamation is any more profound or interesting than the rest of the crap on that platform is stuck in their own little world.
