Once or twice a year since I started writing this blog, I’ve periodically posted some real-life tweets which made reference to IFRS in one way or another (most recently here). This has been very obviously a light-hearted exercise, and I’ve made it pretty clear several times that I don’t see Twitter as having much practical utility, certainly not for IFRS-related matters . As a summer treat of sorts, I’m presenting another batch of those today.

Or at least, I meant it to be a treat, but then I started reflecting how “Twitter” has lately become largely synonymous with “What did Trump tweet today?” meaning that a mostly harmless waste of time comes to seem like a primary medium of our despair. I’ve already expressed my views on Trump – that he’s a social, cultural and political atrocity, whose election conclusively exposes the lies and decay underlying America’s compulsive grandstanding. Among much else, Trump’s malevolent disregard for reflection, analysis and rationality – indeed his apparent passion for the antithesis of all those qualities – seems designed to choke off the very possibility of collective progress, as if to promote some form of mass regression. His inability to grapple with complexity is made newly apparent every day, as for that matter is his failure to make strategic use of simplicity, and it would be no surprise if this were gradually to promote a kind of mass existential torpor. What’s the point, one might ask, of claiming to strain over looking at a particular entity’s financial disclosure, to fine-tune one’s perception of its condition and performance and strategy and risk, when the governing global structure within which it all has to play out is to a great extent at the mercy of a despicable, destructive fool? Obviously I don’t feel such resignation myself – I’m choosing to believe (officially at least) that this will ultimately stand as a historical aberration, but it’s horribly easy to project why it might not be. Obviously the main remediation, if any is available, must be political, but it can’t be exclusively that – in the face of such malignancy, every minor act of intellectual and moral resistance, every small assertion of progressiveness and objectivity, every incremental demonstration of being awake and alert, is a contribution to the resistance. To me, it really is that basic.

Anyway, I guess I’ve completely taken the fun out of this, but as you savour these peculiar messages (presented here in their original form, oddities and misspellings and – warning! – not-infrequent profanities and all), it may be sobering to bear in mind that the relationship they bear to actual productive engagement with IFRS is no more weird or perverse than the relationship between the tweets of the supposed leader of the free world and what might actually constitute (even vaguely) leadership-worthy communication…

Oh, an explanatory note for those not tuned into popular culture (and congratulations, really, if you manage that), there actually was a film last year called The Accountant:

• I heard a kid complain about his conceptual art project and how hard it was. Meanwhile, I ran through IFRS based balance sheets for US Co’s.
• I’m not the accountant. I don’t kill people. I don’t shoot people. So why do I have to learn IFRS-PSAK? Whyyyyyyy………don’t you love me?
• if IAS39 was dance of seven veils, IFRS 9 is more of a drop and flash. It’s going to be a joke
• Ffffffffffffuck IFRS and fuck US GAAP !!!!! Why can’t we all just get along. Fucking twats !
• I was going to tell you what the IAS and ifrs say but that’s what I do on the job and I’m off right now
• To accountants it’s not called hoeing around It’s called being A Non-Current Asset held for Sale…IFRS 5 ey
• This is how we fxxin partaaaaaaay!! Enjoying the holiday party with IFRS 3 peeps
• I can download #TheAccountant now, maybe I’ll be able to learn a trick on how to figure out some of the IFRS
• Can’t believe I just read IFRS 15 and I can’t even recite what’s in the standard, this is bad
• Shitting myself because the lecture notes say IFRS 15 has important examples but I don’t see them anywhere. Read it back to back yaz
• When I see #TheAccountant trailer, I think, “That’s what happens when you tell Ben Affleck to switch from #USGAAP to #IFRS.”
• Imagine the stress of chilling in a police van/cell all day and you still have 5 IFRS standards to catch up with.
• people who pronounce IFRS as “iffers” make me want to DIE.
• Confused life moment #2 of the week… Reading US GAAP v IFRS literature, holding plank, listening to dubstep…
• There’s a two-day IFRS update course happening in November and it costs £1900. I really pray to God the U.K. economy tanks hard as shit.

Well, to that last commentator, it’s certainly getting some help….

The opinions expressed are solely those of the author.