In this post, you’ll notice the use of the verbs “wanted” - the past tense of “want,” two times. Continuing along, you will see the verb“associated” - the past tense of “associate.” Next comes the verb “minded.” You may know this as the past tense of “mind.” The next verb you’ll come across is “thought,” which most will know to be the past tense of the verb “think.”
As we move to the second paragraph of our laureate’s composition it’s a little tricky, because there are present tense verbs paired with past tense verbs that create the effect of talking in the past. You will see he has chosen to use the word “go.” This is present tense. Although not completely clear, it appears he is referring to the archival nature of Twitter, because he continues with two more present tense verbs, “are” and “believe,” before invoking the present progressive with “dropping.” This is a historic, or past, reference as it refers to the mindset of UConn fans in the year 2012. The writer mixes in a penultimate present tense verb - “join.” Although this appears to be present tense, it is again, describing the above mindset of a previous time. Our next stop on the journey to enlightenment brings us to “was,” the past tense of “is,” paired with a present tense “go.” Similar to our previous verb pairing, this may confuse some but “was” helps us understand that the “go” takes place in the past.
As we turn to the end of the paragraph, there is a lot of action! “Would” - the past tense of “will” is followed by “have,” the past tense of has. The full statement comes two a close with two final verbs: been - the past participle of the word “be,” and a final verb - “considered” - generally used as the past tense form of consider.
Our esteemed writer does effectively employ some present tense verb, but taken in it’s totality the context of those are in the past, and as such reflect the author’s perspective that these things are of a bygone era and no longer are.
