The federal government's handling of the same-sex marriage issue has driven strong activity in the Twitter sphere over the past 24 hours.
More than 8,500 tweets have raced through the social media platform since early Tuesday, with commentary exploding at around 10pm AEST as Prime Minister Tony Abbott held a press conference to say coalition MPs wouldn't be allowed a conscience vote on the issue.
The government is now holding out the prospect of a referendum or plebiscite on same-sex marriage if it wins another term in power.
"Am I still asleep?? Did Marriage equality just get blocked AND Cat videos got nearly 1 million viewers last night?? F**k it. I give up," television host Grant Denyer, who has almost 66,000 followers, tweeted on Wednesday.
The majority of tweets, under the hashtags marriageequality and wecandothis, came out of Sydney and Melbourne, which together generated about 58 per cent of tweets on the issue.
