Monday, February 1, 2016

Lame. Lamer. Viral.

Last week, on Wednesday morning, i woke up at around 7.30. Which is late given 7 is my usual get-going schedule. I hurried to kitchen to prepare tea (a morning ritual that i've been true to for almost a year now) before sacrificing two Parle-G biscuits. One drowns and you let another in with the hope it will rescue the martyr. You know the drill. Tragic as it sounds, i posted a tweet on the same. Little did i know what was to follow. 

More on that later. 

Over the years, my priorities on Twitter have changed a lot. Some years ago, receiving a #FF meant a lot to me. But then, i stopped giving them back and magically, i stopped receiving them too. You see, in the online world, i-will-scratch-your-back-only-if-you-scratch-mine mantra works. I RT you and you'll RT me. I compliment your DP and you compliment mine. It's a massive goo moulded by a mutual admiration society. Also, it's all about numbers nowadays. So, coming back to the priorities i mentioned earlier, i don't care much for RTs anymore. I'm more into collecting hearts—no cheese intended—because it's a very noiseless process. The best part being there is no i-will-heart-your-tweet-if-you-heart-mine racket here. So, yes, I heart others' tweets a lot. If there is an interesting tweet on my timeline, i'll like it where i RT it or not. It's an instant mode of recognition; it creates a personal touch between the one who tweeted and the one who hearted. And unlike a retweet spree which can create a ruckus on the timeline, a heart spree doesn't spam your followers. 

That said, my RT-to-Tweet ratio is quite high compared to others solely on the merit of my silence. Since i don't interact on the timeline, my tweets are generally rhetoric and helps my RT2T ratio stay afloat. Which is why i find this biscuit tweet's virality quite amusing. Of late, my tweets garner more hearts than retweets. In fact, my tweets' RT average must lie somewhere between 15 and 20 while the heart average is early 30-ish. I understand these figures are low given the amount of time i've spent on Twitter. Which, again, is why i found the spread of my biscuit tweet remarkable. Some tweeps were guessing that this tweet must have reached some firang's account. To be honest, i don't know for sure because i don't check my Twitter notifications. It's been stuck at 99+ for ages now. I rely more on Hootsuite which displays only those tweets that mention my handle. Besides, i don't have the energy or the inclination to check who did what. 
Speaking of which, my friends on Facebook checked how frequently my tweet was picked up by various Facebook accounts. Of course, you can't expect these shady accounts to hand you credit but that's not the point. The point is you never know what's going to click with the public on social media. 
If you think Instagram would be nicer in following netiquette, you're mistaken. But that's not the point. The point is one of my lamer tweets went viral while my more thoughtful ones remain bacterial.  
Of course, there are honourable exceptions but they are few.

PS: There's an incredible scene in Wag the Dog (1997) when Dustin Hoffman screams, “Fuck my life! I want the credit.” This is before his character gets killed. 

PSS. Like i said earlier, my priorities have changed. 

4 comments:

Harry said...

funny. I received your tweet as a fwdd msg on 2 of the WhatsApp groups I am a part of :-)

Unknown said...

You are really a genius.

Unknown said...

You are really a genius.

Unknown said...

You became known to me by that biscuit tweet :D