The Atlantic

Tweeting Mao's Cultural Revolution in Real-Time

A historical Twitter account made for surreal reading in 2016.
Source: Ng Han Guan / AP Photo

Can we agree on this much? Twitter was terrible in 2016. Too many tweetstorms, too many Russian troll-bots, too much game theory. For the blank slate of 2017, may I suggest you follow the 50th-year anniversary of the Cultural Revolution in real time.

Fifty years ago this past May, Mao Zedong declared the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and in 2016, someone had the idea to livetweet that tumultuous period on a half-century delay.

has about 1,500 followers, which is frankly on the low end of modest. But I’ve been one of its avid followers because this was an uncanny year to “I made a big boo boo” in suggesting Trump did not plan to drain the swamp. The surreal past met the surreal present.

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