What’s a girl to do when she realizes her most rock bottom of dreams has already been done? I would go as far to say I have pined to be the star of a mediocre sitcom and then eventually lose my mind publicly. The “E! True Hollywood Story” would be phenomenal – a portrait of a once cute little kid who led a shipwrecked life since the third grade when she accidentally got a bowl haircut and dyed her hair bright red. All the pain would be worth it for the ultimate pay off: true Twitter fame.
Tweeters, I need an audience, and I need it bad. I obviously need to get more serious about my demise. Maybe it has already happened, and my lack of Twitter fame made it so no one, not even myself, knew. I live my life in a constant state of tweet contemplation. I ask myself, “Is this clever enough to tweet?” over and over again and wait until I have the wording just right before I breathe in deep and click “Send.” Two minutes into Charlie Sheen’s Twitter career, and he has two million followers. I even saw my cat’s tweet using #winning.
Really, everyone? Are we all winning? I know I am not, and that gives me full confidence that a lot of people aren’t winning. Essentially, we are all dying, so in a sense that means we are all #losing. I think the fail whale would agree with me here. No one should be surprised that I’ve made whiskey my new drink – @CharlieSheen made me do it.
@hyacinthblue: don’t be a drag, just be a queen. whether you’re broke or charlie sheen!
Do we really have to bring Gaga into this? I am broke, and it is kind of hard to be a queen when you can’t even buy makeup to cover the bags under your eyes.
@Human_Pollution: Yeah, get ‘em #temple 🙂 #winning in AC for the second day now!
Aw, look you blew it for the Owls. That’s what happens when you mix innocent hashtags with the wrath of Charlie Sheen – we all #lose. P.S. What is with your Twitter handle? That’s disgusting.
@ShnizmuffiN: I’m not sure what the problem is, but the solution is probably dick pics. #winning
I think a lot of us would actually be #winning if the solution to problems would be pictures of penises. But would we still be #winning if we all wanted to vomit all the time? Maybe it is just me who thinks pecker pics are vile. Also, @ShnizmuffiN, see how I did that using the same letter? It is called alliteration and it makes me sound smarter.
You’d think with the awesomeness of https://ischarliesheendead.com he would let me have Twitter but nope.
Samantha Krotzer can be reached at samantha.krotzer@temple.edu.
Dear Samantha,
I, too, am a lover of alliteration. I struggled with the options I could come up with such as phallic photos, dong diagrams, or the cryptic Kodachrome cocks. (I must admit, “pecker pics” had not crossed my mind.) I chose instead to use the phrase “dick pics,” not because of my inability to use literary devices or proper cadence (it IS a rhyme, after all), nor due to my idiocy – implied in the article above, but because it was the simplest, most popular and brief way to express the idea of photographing a penis. I must confess – the fact that you, at best, misunderstood my vocabulary selection or, at worst, missed the joke and proclaimed me a moron, is largely the reason behind this response.
But how did I stumble upon your article? Surely you must be curious. Unfortunately it was not hotlinked or reblogged by any news source. It wasn’t forwarded to me by a Twitter follower (of which I have very few) or Facebook friend or any other online socialite. I didn’t see it in your school’s paper – god I hope this wasn’t actually printed – or hear about it through word of mouth. Nope, I found it Googleing myself. An admittedly vain and disgusting-sounding yet practical practice when one participates online.
“Why did I have to find out about it like that?” I asked myself, a bit perturbed.
Is it not common practice on Twitter to at least mention if not retweet someone if you’re going to use their words as a topic of discussion? Through efficient, technical channels that allow the original author to at least know they are being heard? Repeated? Discussed? Simply placing an asperand before my handle does not achieve this goal.
(Asperand. That’s what “@” symbol is called, for those of you who are curious. Don’t confuse it with an ampersand. That’s what the “&” symbol is called. Learning is fun.)
Granted, Twitter is a largely public forum and the majority of my tweets are public. There’s no law or rule that states you must notify a Twitterer that their tweet has been twatted. Twitted? Tweeted. Either way, formally mentioning or retweeting is a common courtesy – nothing more. You may chuckle at what I’m about to say, but I suggest that this common courtesy is an… act of humanity. Silly, I know, to suggest that a human has forgotten how to act human.
Every once in a while, as you no doubt realize, we need to remind ourselves not just of our own humanity but of the humanity of others as well. I would hate it if we lost sense of what we’re trying to do out here on the internet. We’re trying to entertain. To freshen up. To shake the cage. We’re trying to avoid taking other people’s words, jamming them in our mouths, and vomiting them back into the gaping maw of the internet like a poor girl exposed to one too many dick pics.
We both know it doesn’t work like that, right? If you treat your followers like people, then they’ll treat you like a person. For the most part, anyway. We’re well aware of what a troll can do to a good discussion. But, if you treat your followers like ignorant assholes from the get-go… what then? Is “face time” with strangers not critical – nay – crucial, to the fledgling author?
I fear that in the face of a hectic schedule and a daily grind, you have roboticized your posts. The humanity is lacking. The mutual respect, or at least mutual courtesy, has vanished if it was ever present at all. As your fellow author/entertainer/all around beautiful person, I feel the need to correct this… negligence. I feel I must inject the humanity back into Temple Tweets. I feel that a fair place to start is linking those authors you’ve quoted to their articles. And this one. Because I’m vain. Maybe more face time with the strangers will help this featurette along.
Remember, “In this digital age we [can’t] all hide behind a computer.”
Sincerely,
ShnizmuffiN