Betty White Is Fine, Guys (Will Twitter Ever Learn?)
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It's a tale as old as time, er, well at least as old as Twitter's current interface. You log on to the platform, ready to mindlessly scroll through headache-inducing political discourse and the latest post from an account that shares photos of possums every hour, when you glance over at the topics bar to see that 99-year-old actress, Betty White, is trending.
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A sense of pure panic overcomes you, your mind instantly jumping to the worst. Betty White, in all of her wholesome, Golden Girls glory is the glue holding our society together, you recall. As we all know, in an age in which our institutions are failing and at their lowest levels of trust, the woman who starred in Golden Girl 30 years ago remains one of the last pillars of concrete keeping our trusted institutions from crumbling into a pile of failed Quibi pilots.
Damn well knowing what's at stake, you forge ahead, clicking on her name as your heart pounds with terror. Yet to your complete surprise, Betty White is just fine and dandy – some people, or, well, at least a couple thousand, just felt like talking about their favorite nonagenarian actress for no explicable reason.
Well, reader, after years of enduring this seemingly never-ending cycle of Betty White-induced anxiety, the cursed bird app has finally learned its lesson about unnecessarily scaring the crap out of everyone, doing the blood pressure of millions a collective favor by adding a disclaimer that Betty White is a-okay upon appearing in the search bar.
“Don't panic, our beloved Betty White is okay!” reads the new inclusion of text under her name in the trending topics bar. “People are just chatting about her life and career as an author," the message continues, noting that she is trending alongside the late Bea Arthur, an implication that her sudden influx of internet popularity is probably related to out 100th rewatch of Golden Girls.
So folks, here's to Twitter. If you’re going to charge us $3 a month for not much functionality via Twitter Blue, the least you could do is stop scaring the s--t out of us every time someone posts about Betty White – it's always good to know she's doing well and definitely not dating Pete Davidson.
Top Image: Shutterstock
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