It was wild to watch the partisan divide play out in real time across different social media spheres yesterday.

Notice anything different about these two shots of Senator Van Hollen from Maryland meeting with deported prisoner Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador?

On Bluesky, they only saw the first photo, released by the senator, and people are mostly calling him a hero in the comments for demanding a meeting. On X, the photo mostly circulated was the one released by Nayib Bukele, and the comments are overwhelmingly negative, saying that the senator got played.

Besides the obvious cropping of the photos, the first one shows the senator talking to Garcia at a hotel table with coffee and water. In the second, two maragaritas with Maraschino cherries and salt-rimmed glasses magically appear. At first, I assumed these were AI-generated, but soon realized there were two competing PR stunts aimed at entirely different audiences.

Incidentally, chances are you barely read anything about it on Nostr because most people are here to escape the left-right media war.