My Life in 140 Characters

By Ryan – HodgeBlodge Twat

My mother bought something on eBay recently and it was without a doubt her greatest technological achievement to date. I can’t help but feel that proportionally that is equal to me only joining Twitter this past week. So forgive me if I sound like a guy that just discovered the wheel but this shit is fascinating and new. I created my account on the day of Michael Jackson’s funeral which I guess would be like aliens first experience with humans taking place at Woodstock.

The Top 10 list on the front page just mesmerizes me. Of course on Day 1 the Top Ten list had a clear theme (MJ, Michael, RIP MJ, Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson’s Funeral, Staples Center, etc.) I can only imagine that Election Day and Inauguration day were full of Obama’s, President, black, and about 4 different spellings of Barack. But now I guess the twitterverse (did I make that up? Even I’m not sure) has returned to normal. MJ and Michael Jackson are still at the top of the list but now Vegas, Artest, Harry Potter, and even Saku Koivu are cracking the Top 10. I never would have guessed that Twitter serves as the last remaining provider of hockey news but the proof is in the tweets.

Being new to site, I immediately set about looking for things to do, people to read. I started with Bill Simmons, the last remaining likeable person from ESPN, and he started my path towards enlightenment by giving me Seth Meyers (who all evidence to the contrary I still think is a funny guy.) Seth led me to Morgan Murphy (who in a tight race was probably my winner for “Best MJ Funeral Commentary”) and Ms. Murphy led me to Doug Benson. Each new person was fascinating, not necessarily for what they had to say but more for who they led me to next. For instance, Benson’s list consisted of fellow comics and porn stars–where were all of their cameos in Super High Me? Suddenly I was following Weird Al, and Dave Foley, and Sarah Silverman–who recently put up my favorite tweet yet: “Hey, is it considered molestation if the child makes the first move? I’m gonna need a quick answer on this.” It’s been two days and she still hasn’t put up another tweet (despite having put 5 up the day before.) Let’s hope that she, and that dear child, are both ok.

I guess the weirdest thing to me was those that chose to follow me. I have to be upfront with all of you right now, I have nothing to say that can be said in 140 characters (see: everything I’ve ever written.) I hate to disappoint you- especially the lovely lady whom I’ve never met but offered me pictures of herself in various states of undress, that was quite nice of her. But it’s not just me that’s a tweet-dud, Tom Hanks has 34,047 followers including Doug Benson, and yet his follower-to-tweet ratio is a stunning 34047-to-none. Maybe if we ignore him he’ll post something, a watched kettle and whatnot. Rivers Cuomo has a much more respectable 10000 followers to 4 tweets. Of course all of his were in Japanese symbols, apparently Cuomo has an Asian fetish- who knew? Patton Oswalt was also on a few lists despite having no picture, no tweets, and an email that was tweetmeanoffer@gmail.com. At first I thought ‘That’s a funny email address for the voice of Ratatouille to have’ but now I get it- some kindhearted person is simply saving Patton’s place in line. Patton, like me, just hadn’t really made his way towards Twitter–celebrities, they’re just like us.

It was somewhere around that time- after Benson but before Brian Posehn- that something occurred to me, I was flying by the CNNs and NPRs and instead like a laugh-seeking missle was only adding comics. I eventually added US Soccer (just in case I get my long awaited call-up to the National Team) and Dr. Drew, who must have used Google translate from Nerd to English: “I hope my Tweets are worthy of your follow and I would happily entertain suggestions for future communications.” But nowhere in this endeavor was any sort of real value. I wasn’t getting the news, I wasn’t interacting with people, and really none of what anyone had to say was all that important (although surely I needed to know that one of Jimmy Kimmel’s writer’s dogs has an ear infection.) I’m not looking for something deep necessarily–if I did I would have already added the Dalai Lama–but I guess I’m just looking for something of value. Maybe I’m looking at this thing all wrong. Maybe the laughs and distractions are the value. Maybe the journey is the reward kind of thing. Or maybe I just miss eBay.