GameStop’s meteoric rise in the stock market has made a mess of the last week, and had a number of unintended consequences as the Funko pop retailer’s phoenix-like ascendence has flapped its wings and caused chaos in far-reaching locales. The Robin Hood Society, for example, has certainly had an interesting week on Twitter thanks to an app of the same name throttling users trying to buy retail stocks.
One other unexpected consequence: Jon Stewart joined Twitter to complain about GameStop shenanigans. No, really. Though it wasn’t official on Thursday when the tweet popped up, @jon_actual was heavily hinted to be the former Daily Show host by friend Stephen Colbert.
And on Friday, Stewart fired off a few more tweets and earned his verified blue checkmark, which is tough to get if you’re looking to acquire one in 2021. And he shared a nice message thanking folks who have welcomed him to the microblogging platform.
Thanks for the warm welcome! I promise to only use this app in a sporadic and ineffective manner.
— Jon Stewart (@jonstewart) January 29, 2021
On Friday, though, started really posting. And fittingly, he started with a joke about Donald Trump.
So…if I do really well on here I get to be President, yes?
— Jon Stewart (@jonstewart) January 29, 2021
We won’t analyze every Jon Stewart tweet from here on out, but it is a good joke and actually a compliment to the man who is now banned from the platform. Trump was, for better and much, much worse, a true poster. And his presence on Twitter was a huge reason for the success of his presidential run.
That Trump’s now off the platform is a very good thing, indeed, but it remains to be seen what Stewart intends to do with his time on Twitter. He’ll certainly have an audience for it, though: he already has more than 800,000 followers in just over a day and just three tweets.