‘SCOTUS’ Is Massively Trending On Social Media Among Young Adults

A picture altered to show President Biden pulling down the American flag. A meme about the Supreme Court justices with the words “corrupt” emblazoned across the top. A couple of totally unprintable messages that describe what happens when angry young adults start to rebel.

Here are some of the warning signs. a trending term on social media. SCOTUS, or the Supreme Court of the United States (or SCOTUS), is in the spotlight because of its two important rulings on affirmative action and student loans.

You can imagine that young adults who are currently attending college or have just graduated do not like this. Looking at the accounts of many of the posters, it’s obvious this has hit a nerve with this demographic.

I was particularly interested in the allegations that the Court is corrupt and favours certain political and religious parties.

What’s most interesting about this trending topic is that social media is a great place to gauge the temperature of people online, at least those who even use social media and share their opinions (meaning, almost everyone). It’s not at all scientific, and in some ways (once again) we should take this sentiment with a grain of salt. Why? Why?

The posts tend to be overwhelmingly negative. One scroll through a few pages of the SCOTUS term on Twitter (both using the abbreviation in a post or using the hashtag) reveals a whole host of complaints — to the tune of about 514,000 tweets.

Other words and hashtags, like “Rob Pelinka” (the Los Angeles Lakers GM who commented on key players recently), have only a few thousand mentions. Twitter excels in this area, as anything above 500,000 mentions is worthy of attention. With a quick glance you can find out what’s trending, and quickly scroll through the posts.

It’s a little harder on Facebook, but not impossible. You can use SCOTUS as a search term to find out what the main figures are saying and also read comments from your friends. Twitter is an easier platform — especially on the web — for seeing how many people are mentioning a specific term and then quickly clicking to see what they are saying, without as much fuss.

What I’d prefer to see on social media when there are major rulings like this is some sort of gauge for how these trending topics compare to other terms in the past. It’s hard to know if 500,000 mentions is incredibly high compared to previous cultural events like this.

It is, of course, a cultural festival. This puts the “social” in social media in ways we’ve rarely seen before. There are a lot of insightful comments among the hatred and anger. For every post asking legitimate questions and raising concerns from a given perspective, which sometimes leads to an intelligent discourse and commentary, there are claims about “neocommie propaganda” and other barbs meant to attack and criticize.

The discourse will hopefully win out this time over the barbs.