So I thought this was funny.

Now, I don’t know how an august thinkfluencer and popular internet celebrity like Barro happened upon this little academic blog, but that’s not important. What is important is that this Tweet is flagrantly, straightforwardly, unambiguously dishonest. You can read the piece here. I said that, to me, Barro becomes irrelevant as an intellect because he refuses to actually engage with any arguments that are to the left of Richard Nixon. He’s free to disagree, and I’d expect him to. But that’s not the same as what he’s saying here; he’s representing this as me calling him irrelevant in general. That’s not what I said. He’s a liar. Trust me: no one who reads anything political online could mistake Barro for anything other than a very big deal. He’ll tell you all about it.

Now, Barro knows that his Tweet is a lie. But he also knows that, as a Twitter celebrity, he can tweet out an inaccurate characterization of what someone else said, and no one will call him on it. Barro knows that there is essentially nothing to lose in mischaracterizing what someone like me says. He knows his status in the rigid hierarchies of Twitter (which are publicly denied but privately obsessed over by people using the service) will scare most people off from calling him on it. He can also rely on the rank laziness of most people who consider themselves internet intellectuals: they won’t bother to click the link and see if what he’s saying is true. This basic thing happens on Twitter literally every day. Since we’re in something of a renaissance for aggressive, heavy-handed defenses of Twitter, it’d be nice if the people writing them would bother to actually consider the actual bad behavior that is endemic to the service.

Incidentally, it’s not lost on me– a post I wrote about the shame of a culture of closed mindedness merely inspired more. These guys just don’t want to engage certain kinds of argument. But they enjoy status and social support that inoculates them from ever having to confront that fact. Which was exactly my point with Barro: as I said in that piece, he is a connected, influential, important guy. But it’s that self-same prominence that has blunted his ability to actually defend his opinion. Look at that Tweet above. It’s the work of a man who knows he will be rewarded just as much for dismissal as he will be for making an argument. And that’s what makes him weak.