Why I Love Twitter Lately

Internet fads are a lot of fun.  They're not hurting anyone by existing.  It's one of many distractions you can get involved with and have a little fun with.  What makes it exceptional in this day and age is the speed in which the info makes it way to the masses, thanks to Twitter.

I'm a crazy asshole

Take for example three rather large-scale, useless Internet fads of the past month or so.  First, there was Charlie Sheen, and his allegedly spiraling personal life.  The news would touch on it because he is a famous person, and when he would do something new/dumb, we all heard about it weather we liked it or not.  He did some drugs, went a little bit off his rocker in an interview or two, and people were entertained by it, mostly by the shock factor of the whole thing.  Sheen started tweeting, and it was all down hill from there.  Before you know it, he's creating catchphrases like Tigerblood and Adonis DNA and Winning.  All of it is completely irrelevant to you and me.  Really it is.  Charlie Sheen (the MaSHEEN) has zero impact on anyone's daily life if you choose to not have it in your life.  But if you watch it unfold, you can lose yourself in it, and sometimes in this crazy world, you need that escape.  You don't have to pay any attention to him, but you can chose to, if one was so inclined.

That fad lost its luster quickly, and Charlie wore out his welcome a bit.  He's trying to cash in on it now by going on tour, a la Conan O'Brien, but It's not the same.  People don't love Charlie Sheen.  People love personalities spiraling out of control.

fun fun fun fun

Then, out of the blue came Rebecca Black.  Her awful song called Friday was pointed out to me on YouTube by someone I follow on Twitter named Tony Thaxton, who is the drummer of Motion City Soundtrack.  He included a link to the video saying "Have you seen this? Worst song ever?  I hesitate to put the question mark in there."  So, naturally, I had to check it out.  Yup, that was terrible.  How can anyone honestly write that song?  Like, how could they have not changed some of those lyrics to make them at least decent, instead of unbelievably awful.  Half way through the song, I was convinced it was a joke.  How could this be real?  Who would ever write these lyrics?  But it's not fake.  It's a real song that someone wrote and thought might be a hit.  Yet, it's funnier because it's not trying to be.

A poisonous has never been funnier

After that came the Bronx Zoo's Cobra thing.  A cobra went missing from the Bronx zoo, and someone was quick enough to think of starting a twitter account for the astray slithering reptile.  The tweets were spot on, and hilarious.  Suddenly, we're talking about the snake on the Today show, and on the Big Dave and Company Podcast, and shit.  It got like 1000,000 followers in like 48 hours.  Just crazy.

Again, I am all for funny Internet fads because they take you away from what you are currently dealing with, whatever it is.  Weather you're waiting every second for your baby to be born or your job is extremely slow and monotonous or whatever the case may be.  There is usually something out there for you to shift your focus to so that at the end of the day, you don't end up putting a shotgun to the your chin.  You never know where the next thing will come from, and you can't create it.  You can take advantage of a news story (cobra) and make a fun joke about it, but you can't predict that Rebecca Black's Friday will make us all laugh. You can't create that with the purpose, because it loses what makes it funny on a viral level.

The Internet is a funny ass place, my friends.