Posts tagged twitter
During moments of tragedy, it’s probably best just shut the fuck up on Twitter.
There’s a temptation when tragedy hits–especially violent tragedy–to use it to prove a worldview right as people take to Twitter to transform dead and mangled bodies into scaffolding under a preexisting belief. It’s execrable. Whether it’s a rush to assign blame, a speculation regarding motive, or an I-told-you-so matters little. That kind of stuff can play badly enough in a next day op-ed, but in an unedited 140 character tweet issued shortly after some terrible thing has just gone down, it’s pure poison.
Have you ever unfollowed someone on Twitter, only to be disappointed by just how passively passive aggressive it was? Well, BirdLaunch is now here for aggressive unfollowing.
Pentametron (@Pentametron) scans Twitter for posts in iambic pentameter and pairs them into rhyming couplets with tremendous effect.
Some samples:
She hotter then a summer day in hell
There is the nicest spa in this hotelI need a fucking breakfast sandwich NOW
my brother makes amazing pancakes wowI have the biggest headache ever. Why
You walked away and never said goodbye.Tattoo! Tattoo! Tattoo! Tattoo! Tattoo!
My one and only, one and only you.The unfamiliar is a scary place.
I hate the whole entire human race
Vine Peek is a real-time feed of posts to Vine (which is the new Twitter six-second video thingy). Be warned that it could be pervy, but mostly it seems to be people’s pets.
A parable about your expectation of customer service on Twitter.
I closed the door and ran to my front window and looked down at the street as the two co-workers got back into the car, which was a regular car, not a Home Depot truck. It was clearly the personal car of one of them. It had New Jersey plates. They still had a long way to go before they got home that night.
I burst into tears.
[…]
Wait your turn, like everybody else, like we all learned in elementary school. It’s much more satisfying in the end.
➜ The problem with social media is your friends
If you’re inanity of social media, the problem is probably your friends.
Being that you are a smart and interesting guy who would distill only the finest information from any social network, the problem is the garbage going into your feed, which can only come out as garbage in your column. And that garbage is being created by the people who you choose to follow and know.
➜ In praise of the hashtag
In praise of the hashtag.
At a certain point, appending a hashtag to a post might simply make it look like an ad. (There were recent reports of a TV show to be called “#Resistance” — complete with hashtag — which seems like a bald attempt to hop the latest social media bandwagon.) But the potential for this kind of abuse is all the more reason to advocate for and embrace the hashtag’s literary possibilities.
➜ Twitter doesn’t want you
Twitter doesn’t want you. Truth!
You’ve been replaced with immature teenagers, attention-starved celebrities, “SEO ninjas”, and companies pretending to build relationships with their clientele when in reality, they’re simply making it easier to appease dissatisfied customers before bad word-of-mouth gets out of hand.
➜ Twitter is a corporate API
Twitter is a corporate API.
You really don’t have any power. However it’s impossible to avoid them. But try to. And don’t be a crybaby when you get hurt.
➜ WWII Tweets
Follow tweets from WWII in realtime over the next six years.
Cross posted from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/poploserdotorg/~3/uqp_OVZRCoU/
Writing in the Age of Twitter
Writing in the age of Twitter.
It can be very amusing, Dickensian, when a fictional avatar has a narrow, caricatured personality: the girl who says, exclusively, shit girls say, or the tween hobo or out-of-touch masculine blowhard who is always true to type. It’s a lot less funny when a real person, supposedly the many-sided hero of his own life, decides to say only one sort of thing, and say it all the time.
Also: the Queen’s English Society has ceased operation, upsetting at least one guy.
Margaret Reynolds – a professor of English, no less – argued in the Guardian that the ‘cultural policing’ of English is ‘always dangerous’, because it says: ‘I am right and you are wrong.’ Blimey, when even a prof is reluctant to say ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’, which is kind of her job, you know standards are in a parlous state.
Cross posted from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/poploserdotorg/~3/kdz6DYmiKA8/
Willy Loman Contemplates Twittercide
Willy Loman contemplates Twittercide.
Now, now, Happy, just calm down, pal. I know you’re a big shot with your account out on the West Coast— lotta’ followers out on the West Coast— but don’t think your old man won’t block ya’. And it ain’t true what they say, Biff, because sometimes it can be too late to rebuild a following. See, it’s not about money, or power, or telling a good story with this Twitter business—and Twitter business is definitely business— it’s about being well liked. It’s about being a man of few words. It’s about getting those favorites, those mentions, those retweets. You never understood, Biff, because you just don’t have what it takes, ya’ lazy bum. You don’t have the puns in you, not like your Old Man and the Tweets, who Earnedhis Trendingway.
Cross posted from http://bit.ly/K9XTEW
