Old man yells at cloud computing

President Joe Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office for what’s expected to be the final time tonight, issuing a farewell address to a nation who so recently gave him a collective “Nah, no thank you.” In a 17-minute address, Biden played the hits, referencing the Statue Of Liberty, speaking about the potential of the American people, and calling for a defense of democracy—before taking a minute to do what we all most do, in this time and place in the great American experiment: Complain about social media for a bit.

Specifically, Biden deigned to read from The Book Of Dwight, invoking Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous farewell address about the “military-industrial complex” by naming his worries about a “tech-industrial complex” currently a-brewing in the world. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence,” Biden declared. “Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling, editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking,” Biden added, as specific as he gets while obliquely calling out the Musks and the Zuckerbergs of the planet, who’ve spent the months since the election steadily cozying up to The Other Guy. “The truth is smothered by lies, told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable.” (One nice thing about lobbing these kinds of bombs in a farewell address: No way to be held accountable yourself with questions about what such measures would actually look like; the country’s phone addicts are gearing up right now for Biden’s biggest major push on Big Tech, the law he signed banning TikTok in the States last year.)

Biden also namechecked artificial intelligence, referencing the need for controls—but also to keep the States’ development of the tech ahead of China’s. Biden then took a detour through bummer town, noting that observing the concentration of power he’s been warning about means “participating in our democracy becomes exhausting, even disillusioning,” which, hey, finally a Joe Biden we can relate to. (He got back to Statue of Liberty metaphors a few minutes later, but it was nice while it lasted.) He ended on a note of thanks, and resisted the urge to finish on a resolute “You shit in this bed, now have fun sleeping in it, fuckers,” which is presumably the kind of restraint that explains why he got to be President, instead of us.