UPDATE: Cruz states that a staffer accidentally hit the Like button in question
The Twitter account @SexuallPosts has now updated its bio to read “follow the same porn @TedCruz watches.”
That’s because it was revealed Tuesday that Cruz’sTwitter account had “liked” a short pornographic video posted by the account. Twitter accounts’ “likes” are publicly visible, and someone did the potentially tedious work for trolling through Cruz’s until they found tjust the right one to share.
“The Texas senator and former U.S. presidential hopeful liked a pretty graphic two-minute long video,” according to Mashable. “With over 3 million followers, the like from Cruz’s verified account would have pushed the video to the news feeds of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of his followers’ timelines” because of Twitter’s tailoring algorithms.
And now it is definitely in millions of people’s timelines as the “scandal” and the linked video go viral.
One person Tweeted at Cruz: “People can see your likes my dude” and another, hip to althe algorithmical way of things, said “I wonder how many of his followers saw that tweet in their feed because he liked it.”
Mashable concluded their coverage of the incident by writing: “How long…until a hapless social media intern gets blamed for this?”
They don’t seem to be far off. Just after 2 am Tuesday, Cruz’s senior communications adviser, Cahterine Frazier, tweeted “The offensive tweet posted on @tedcruz account earlier has been removed by staff and reported to Twitter,” as if the social media site were responsible for her boss’s recreational activities.
Far from taking responsibility for the pornographic like, it seems tha tCruz’s camp will indeed push the blame off onto someone else or try to remain as mum about the situation as possible.
The reportedly “infidelity-themed” porn video was liked in the middle of the night according to reports, making it possible that a communications’ aide slipped up during a late-night shift, though it is, of course, still possible that Cruz was doing what we all do and getting his kicks in the privacy of the wee small hours of the night.
Meanwhile, Twitter is letting him have it in its creative, trolling and frequently witty way. As The Verge put it: “The last time Cruz reached this level of popularity on Twitter was when the internet wondered aloud if Cruz was the unidentified Zodiac Killer.”
Normally one could say that jokes about someone’s porn preferences and the potential that he is an unidentified serial killer wouldn’t bode well for a potential candidate for president or public office; but, times have change, haven’t they?
At least the porn Mr. Cruz may or may not have been watching was between two consenting, non-related adults.
Our current president could take some lessons from the Texas senator, that’s all I’m saying.