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Twitter, abusing the #asksnowden Q&A is why we can’t have nice things

SnowdenPRISM leaker and current Hong Kong resident Edward Snowden fielded questions from the public today in a Twitter Q & A organized by The Guardian. What an exciting opportunity to ask our generation’s (maybe) Dan Ellsberg about his motivations! What else he learned about the NSA? Does he expect to be prosecuted? 

There are plenty of thoughtful questions we as a Twitter collective can ask the man who told us that the government’s surveillance efforts were far more extensive than many thought. But everyone on Twitter is a smartass.

While many people asked thoughtful questions, many… well, did not, and I just watched the Miss USA pageant so my standards for inane questions and answers are low.

Here’s a smattering of some of the TOP tweets at Snowden:

 OK, this one made me laugh, even though we need to lay off the Snowden girlfriend thing:

 The age old inquiry:

And here’s X-Files humor. Somehow even more inappropriate considering the whole Snowden situation seems like it’d fit well in an early X-Files myth-arc:

Vaguely more on topic than most:

Cosmopolitan magazine, an (ostensible) actual news source, asked this question and cemented its status as The Worstttttttttttttt:

 This one might be my favorite, but it’s definitely not a worthy use of a LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT WHISTLEBLOWER’S TIME:

(Full disclosure, I re-tweeted it.)

Lest you look at these tweets and feel once again resigned to the fact that snark is now our new national register, there were also some very thoughtful questions posed at Snowden, and you can check out a summary of his answers to non-ridiculous questions at the Guardian’s website.

And in case you thought being a snarkaholic snarkmaster is just a Twitter thing, somebody already made a meme based on something Snowden said in the Q&A (to be fair, it’s a pretty out-there thing to say): Screen Shot 2013-06-17 at 12.28.51 PM

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Kate Knibbs
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