The other night I was having a chat on Twitter, or Twat, with a friend I had only ever met on the social network. Somewhere during the course of the conversation, she mentioned that she disliked Twitter, and had even blogged about it here.
I agreed with her on a few points, but being the social whore that I am, I soon realized that in truth I quite like Twitter. Well I use that word 'like' rather loosely. The fact is, I love Twitter.
I love the fact that I finally have an outlet for all my ramblings, and there are plenty of them. (Ramblings, that is)
I love that I can meet new people just by having read something funny they said, or by them having thought one of my tweets was worthy of a literary scholarship. (Yes I get that often.)
Over the last 2 years I've become completely addicted to having my tweets retweeted by famous people I admire and even read out aloud on the radio. I don't care much for celebrities because I simply don't believe they can truly connect with and respond to a following of 1 million people asking them stupid random questions like 'What colour are your undies today?' But some of the locals with huge followings have surprised me and shown themselves to be completely in touch with their fans. @DJFreshSA , @Anele and @F1Sasha are fine examples.
On the flip side however, it's also exposed me to people who I initially thought would be admirable but turned out to be complete tossers. There's a local comedian who, while admittedly funny, has shown himself to be an absolute cocktart. Yes, that's my word for tonite. Cocktart. I recall when he was going through a rather tough personal period, and relied very heavily on his fans. How quickly he has forgotten the very people who made him who he is today. I won't mention his name, only because I don't want my blog to help further his fame or infamy in any way.
Speaking of cocktarts, I happened to read a few retweets from friends of mine about someone claiming to be a world-renowned author amongst other things.
I replied to something she said out of interest, and within a few minutes we had an interesting debate going.
She felt that anyone in Africa who was not of dark skin and 'nappy hair' as she termed it, did not deserve the title of being called 'African.' I completely disagreed, and voiced my reasoning and opinion.
Evidently @KolaBoof as she calls herself, turned out to be rather inarticulate in expressing a defence of her rather controversial opinions, and resorted to profanity; which I don't usually mind. Except when said profanity is used to hide a clear obtuseness and a totally fucked up view of the world, then you can expect me to become rather vocal.
Needless to say, when challenged she ran for the hills and blocked me from any further engagement in conversation.
So it was with interest that I Googled her to find out more about this clearly troubled soul, and boy was I surprised.
She claims to have been a spy.
She claims to have been Osama Bin Laden's mistress in Morocco.
She claims to be a famous author.
She claims to have been invited by none other than Jacob Zuma for a weekend of wild and crazy monkey sex.
Ok that last one is slightly more believable, even by Jacob Zuma's low standards.
You can read the article right here and make up your own mind.
This brings me to the very reason I enjoy being on Twitter.
Where else would I come across Osama Bin Laden's delusional mistress, or JZ's potential squeeze?
I can't think of any other platform that would have afforded me that opportunity, unless of course I was spending the weekend at a mental asylum.
Finally, and I may have mentioned this before, my original tweet 'You're so vain, you probably think this tweet is about you' went viral almost 2 years back and I always grin when I see it still doing the rounds. Sometimes, you say the darnedest thing and suddenly you have a hundred people thinking 'Wow, this guys a genius.'
To those people, I'd like to say "Who am I to argue with you?"
This post is dedicated to @lotusflower__ who was the inspiration behind tonights ramblings :)
Although I do go on Twitter now and then, I find I still prefer Facebook. But there's no better way to stalk someone :)
ReplyDeleteI had no idea that I could make ridiculously untrue or at the very least unverifiable claims on Twitter and become famous! I have no idea who that woman is, have never heard her name, and have never seen her book on any lists I follow. Very interesting! :)
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