Finding new life on Twitter
One of the best things about Twitter is it allows you to focus on your interests or areas of expertise in a way that keeps you on top of trends and allows you to appear really smart, if you follow the right people.
They feed you information that you didn't have to find on your own and you can really grow to depend on this constant flow to keep you up-to-date and on your toes.
But have you ever looked beyond your areas of interest or put some thought into the mind-blowing stats characterizing Twitter's growth? Twitter didn't reach the 10 million tweets milestone thanks to your circle of chosen friends and followers.
We tend to inhabit one planet on Twitter and many of us stay there, hardly venturing out.
I'll use myself as an example. I've certainly used my share of hash tags and followed others, but it's mostly at conferences and events or related to some conversation I'm following and it is almost ALWAYS related to my work. While I enjoy all of that immensely, and will continue to be a hash tag using fool, I've realized recently that there are people having loads of fun on Twitter, and it has nothing to do with their work.
I'm not talking about the actors, basketball players and the groupies both attract, but the genuine fun loving people just making up stuff and having a good old time.
I stumbled upon a hash tag today called #omgwhatateen. So, I briefly stepped foot off my planet and spent some time reading the posts and then visited the source and found myself intrigued and laughing quite a bit. This @OMGwhatateen account has nearly 29,000 followers and belongs to more than 1,300 lists. The posts are quotes that are often spewed by teens, such as:
"I can't properly clean my room because I get distracted by the cool stuff I find #omgwhatateen" and "Dear teacher, I talk no matter where I am. Moving my seat will not help.#omgwhatateen" Those are two that made me laugh because both described me when I was a teen. Before I knew it I was hopelessly drawn in.
Here's the bio:
Then there was the hash tag #unfollowexcuses listing funny reasons used to justify unfollowing another user. Some funny stuff there too. like:
"It's nothing personal, I just realized after reading your tweets that you suck #unfollowexcuses."
Okay that's a bit crude, but it is also funny, and I don't laugh like that much when reading my stream. Now, back to my point. After seeing how many lists the @OMGwhatateen account had been added to, I started viewing some of them. I found cool list names like: "Makes-me-ROFL" and others that I cannot post here on my company blog, but if you look around you will find some of them.
Why am I not having this kind of fun on Twitter? Well, that's a rhetorical question. I know why. It's because I use it professionally and I don't live on Planet Fun.
But I am definitely going to start peeking in on those who do live there and following those crazy hash tags when I need a laugh.
If you come across any, let me know.
Comments
I adore Twitter accounts that tweet one hilarious statement. It's something I wish I did more. One of my favorites it @Fireland. His tweets are insane, but absolutely hilarious. I always look forward to seeing his tweets.
I think that I need to create a list of some of those, just to get a laugh when I need one. I will look him up. Thanks for sharing, Jay.
Not sure if this one is too appropriate either, but Chelsea Handler sure does say some funny things. And I totally agree with this post - though I tend to follow mainly Ad/Creative people and Music people, I have a couple accounts that I follow that are totally random and I find that I don't ever skip over their tweets like I may for some of the others.
Great post, thanks! :)
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