The guillotine is a hungry mistress, and will eventually turn on those feeding it.
Consider the two leaders of the French Revolution, Georges-Jacques Danton, and Maximilien Robespierre, both of who led the charge against the unjust Ancien Régime, but both of which eventually became part of Ms. Guillotine’s diet.
And a brutal diet it was, which took 40,000 people to satiate:
Its operation became a popular entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators. Vendors sold programs listing the names of those scheduled to die. Many people came day after day and vied for the best locations from which to observe the proceedings; knitting women (tricoteuses) formed a cadre of hardcore regulars, inciting the crowd. Parents often brought their children. By the end of the Terror, the crowds had thinned drastically. Repetition had staled even this most grisly of entertainments, and audiences grew bored.
From Wikipedia
So, what’s the point of this post?
First, perhaps we need a catchy name for this eating of one’s own: How about the Danton-Robespierre Effect?
And second, I would consider the possibility that Twitter may be the modern guillotine, one in which the Danton-Robespierre Effect is alive and well.
Be careful.