2B — Thursday, January 19, 2017
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
The internet is, and always has
been, a weird place.
I’ll elaborate: The internet has
developed into an uninhibited
digital space where anyone, no
matter how weird or strange one’s
taste, can express oneself in any way
one wants. Users can feel as if they
are part of a community without
actually physically interacting with
it. Given this autonomy, the most
avid of users can explore the World
Wide Web and end up traveling
through an infinite amount of
virtual rabbit holes. Some get lost
in watching YouTube conspiracies
for hours on end, while others
delve deep into Reddit forums
and the never-ending abyss that is
Wikipedia.
But what is most intriguing
about the internet is how its online
communities have developed into
individualized subcultures. Weird
Twitter, in particular, is one such
subculture, in which a loosely
connected group of Twitter users
create a series of statuses that can
be absurdist, bizarre, meta and
straight-up nonsensical. Somehow,
Weird
Twitter
has
managed
to attract a wide underground
audience. If you’re an avid Twitter
user, like I am, you’re likely
following a Weird Twitter account
without even realizing it.
To describe Weird Twitter in this
way, however, is oversimplifying
the concept as a whole. It’s not
just a collection of snarky users
mocking modern society through
odd posts on Twitter. Rather, it’s a
postmodern, underground, cyber-
cultural movement that is almost
impossible to categorize through
just one definition. The Awl’s Ken
Layne called it “(an) intentionally
wrong style of idiotic comedy.” The
Daily Dot’s Fernando Alfonso III
deemed it “a burgeoning comedy
subculture.” Sebastian Benthall of
the blog Digifesto claimed it was
“aleatoric poetry.” The New York
Times described it as “inane” and
posited that early adopters of Weird
Twitter used “inside humor to
subtly mock the site’s corporate and
mainstream users.”
Perhaps
Slacktory.com’s
definition
is
the
closest
representation
of
Weird
Twitter,
particularly
in
its
description
of
Weird
Twitter’s
distinctive
aesthetic
appeal:
“Sloppy
punctuation/
spelling/capitalization,
poetic
experimentation
with
sentence
format,
first-person
throwaway
characters, and other techniques
little known to the vast majority of
‘serious’ Twitter users.”
While Weird Twitter has grown
more popular in the past few years,
the origins of its school of thought,
so to speak, date back even before
the site’s existence. In 2002, the
website
SomethingAwful.com
created an exclusive subforum
titled FYAD (short for Fuck You
and Die, of course), which was
arguably a precursor to Weird
Twitter. Like Weird Twitter, FYAD
was
known
for
incorporating
brevity, surrealism, lack of context
and ironic humor into the content
produced by its users. The subforum
no longer lives — though there’s a
best-of collection that exists — but
FYAD certainly prompted users of
Something Awful to utilize their
voices on other free-form platforms
like the controversial forum site
4chan.
Eventually,
however,
Twitter would become the more
mainstream site that hosted and
popularized this kind of small,
niche community.
One of the earliest examples of
Weird Twitter as a concept came
from a guy named Jon Hendren,
who created his Twitter account
@fart (119k followers) in 2008. He
garnered online attention when
he posted this status in May 2012:
“i saw an ad on craigslist once that
said ‘free firewood, u collect it’ so
i wrote the guy and said ‘bud you
just wrote an ad for the woods.’ ”
It’s this kind of random, deadpan
and guffaw-inducing post that
represents one of the many facets of
a vaguely inexplicable concept like
Weird Twitter.
After that status blew up, Weird
Twitter gradually proliferated into
the baffling marvel that it is today.
Accounts like @Seinfeld2000 (137k
followers), @Horse_ebooks (177k
followers), @dril (470k followers)
and @NYTMinusContext (147k
followers) have become popular
among consumers of the subculture.
Each
of
these
accounts
are
idiosyncratic in their own way, yet
they share a similar self-awareness
in making intentionally stupid or
eccentric tweets. Even stand-up
comedian Brandon Wardell (74.8k
followers), hip-hop artist Lil B
(1.35m followers) and actor/writer
Rob Delaney (1.33m followers) could
be considered part of Weird Twitter.
Wardell integrates his abbreviated,
text-message-like vernacular with
hilarious, thought-provoking quips
about pop culture, while Lil B puts
his signature on almost every one
of his bizarre tweets, suggesting
that he is, in fact, Lil B and not some
online bot. Alernatively, Delaney
was an early user of Weird Twitter,
but due to the success of his Amazon
show “Catastrophe,” he has merged
into the mainstream part of Twitter
and become more outspoken on hot-
button political issues.
Weird Twitter is as entertaining
and bewildering as it is amoebic
and ineffable. Critics may just
pass it off as unimportant jargon
or a pretentious display of how
millennials communicate online.
On the contrary, Weird Twitter
offers a creative, comedic space
for some of the internet’s most
sarcastic,
anti-intellectual
and
angsty voices. As Buzzfeed’s John
Herrman and Katie Notopoulos
noted in their comprehensive 2013
oral history of Weird Twitter, it is
“where the language of Twitter gets
created, where its funniest jokes
come from, and where its worst
tendencies are isolated, rebroadcast,
and sometimes destroyed.” Weird
Twitter is uniquely insular not only
in how it transcends the normal
barriers of the internet with its
unusual, off beat discourse, but also
in how it critiques other users.
Since 2014, a committee of
several
Weird
Twitter-like
accounts led by The Tourney
Organizer, a member of the group,
engage in a March Madness style
online tournament called the Shit
Account Tourney. The objective
of the SAT is simple: choose the
worst, shittiest Twitter account of
the year. According to an article
from New York Magazine, the top
picks from 2015’s SAT included
the overtly patriotic Cloyd Rivers,
conservative actor James Woods,
Trayvon Martin killer George
Zimmerman and The Tweet of
God, an account that imagines what
God’s Twitter account would look
like. The foursome were deemed
the “Fuccboi Four.”
The 16 contenders of this past
year’s SAT were divided into
regions that were named based on
each account’s level of “shittiness.”
With the intense politics of 2016,
pro-Trump
conservatives
on
Twitter, like online commentator
Mike
Cernovich,
dominated
the “cuck” region, while vocal
Hillary Clinton supporters, like
“Jeopardy!” winner Arthur Chu,
commanded the “headass” region.
For those confused by the terms
“cuck” and “headass,” both are
pejorative terms that are often used
on Twitter. The former denotes
someone perceived as emasculated
and the latter is defined by Urban
Dictionary as a bothersome person
who uses “constant social faux pas,
obnoxious mannerisms, unrealistic
expectations
and
general
ineptitude” in their tweets.
Given these accounts are based
around political opinions, it’s easy
to assume the SAT committee is
biased when it comes to judging
accounts. But according to an SAT
Committee Member (who declined
to provide his name or handle, but
whom we will refer to as Kevin),
the tournament is judged relatively
fairly and the judges do their best
to critique an account more on its
quality than on its political views.
“We’re all good buds, but have
political opinions all over the
spectrum, which helps to make
a fair tourney,” Kevin wrote in
a direct message interview on
Twitter. “The only thing that truly
matters is how bad your account is,
not whether you support free trade
or some political bullshit.”
In addition to the “cuck” and
“headass”
regions,
there’s
the
“Patreon” region, consisting of
“woke”
feminists
(actor
Matt
McGorry, writer Sady Doyle), and
the “spirit cooking” region, which is
made up of athletes and celebrities
who tweet too much (“Dilbert”
creator Scott Adams, actresses
Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer).
By making a democratic process,
the SAT committee allows Twitter
users to vote via Twitter polls and
determine who has the shittiest
account. And with a tight race
between Cernovich, Chu, former
Hillary
Clinton
adviser
Peter
Daou and New York Times best-
selling author Kurt Eichenwald,
Eichenwald
was
crowned
the
winner of the 2016 Shit Account
Tourney.
In regards to what actually
makes a shit account “shit,” another
committee member, who wished
to be named Paul, mentioned that
it depends on “how thin-skinned
they are, proportional to the size of
their platform or their actual offline
power.”
Weird Twitter accounts and
tournament organizers, like writer
Sam
Grady
(@TheSamGrady),
believe the SAT “offers a form
of entertaining self-policing to a
community that for too long has
gotten away with parading around
awful content that plebes eat up.”
Similarly, the Tourney organizer
believes that the SAT is a fun
experience, saying “the humor of
the Tourney itself is to illuminate
that online opinions are mostly
shitty.” The Tourney’s purpose,
according to the Tourney trganizer,
is to mock these people but “allow
the general population to decide
who is the shittiest.”
Though most might classify
these accounts as Weird Twitter,
Paul and The Tourney Organizer
don’t consider themselves as such.
“I don’t think the committee
is
really
‘weird-twitter,’”
Paul
wrote. “Most of us don’t have tons
of followers or put a lot of time or
thought into our jokes. We just riff
on dumb shit.”
He also suggested, even, that
the tourney is “not there for Weird
Twitter, or any other specific
faction. It’s basically for the people
who spend a decent amount of time
on here.”
Despite
these
contradictory
statements, Weird Twitter can play
a pivotal role in shaping the SAT
for some, especially with Grady. As
a struggling writer who joined the
Weird Twitter community in 2011,
Grady believes the movement and
the SAT are much more relevant
than we give them credit for. He
believes Weird Twitter and the
SAT “allow us to get above the
BS of feigned manners and fake
sincerity
and
really
critically
examine some of the accounts on
here who genuinely add nothing to
the larger conversation aside from
ego stroking and creating a mass
hug-box.”
This internal conflict of Weird
Twitter’s identity brings up an
interesting
existential
question.
If certain accounts that would
be considered part of the Weird
Twitter community don’t identify
as such, then what exactly is
Weird Twitter? And if the SAT is
not a product of Weird Twitter,
then how and where does it fit in
within the larger paradigm of the
Twitter community?As a genre
of online humor, Weird Twitter
seems concerned with provoking
the most bewildered reactions from
people. But as a postmodern online
subculture, Weird Twitter lacks an
inherent unity and thus remains
divided, with some believing it
doesn’t exist anymore and others
saying the opposite. It’s quite a
paradox.
What will become of Weird
Twitter in the following years,
where our president-elect reigns
supreme as one of the most
excessively active and aggressive
Twitter users? According to Grady,
Weird Twitter seems to be headed
in a somewhat more political
direction.
“The future of this subculture
is one in which mainstream, left-
wing, political thought and online
discourse begin to more and more
look like the Chapo (Trap House)
crew,” Grady wrote.
Chapo
Trap
House,
an
irreverent leftist podcast created
by three Weird Twitter users (@
ByYourLogic, @cushbomb and @
willmenaker) during the election
season, is one such example for how
Weird Twitter can play a significant
part within the larger realm of the
internet. The podcast has garnered
both ire and praise from the online
community
for
its
pointedly
humorous and scathing attacks on
both liberals and conservatives. It
represents one of the many products
of Weird Twitter that highlight
the movement’s potential political
utility.
“We already see it in the alt-
right,” Grady continued, “a kind
of ironic detachment from sincere
belief that will replace genuine
ideology. A kind of hysterical-realist
ubiquitous media nightmare where
all cultural iconography is reduced
to complete meaninglessness. I
don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
The fate of Weird Twitter, and
the greater online community at
large, is still uncertain. But it’s hard
not to recognize how something
that was once deemed just a crude,
exclusive form of online humor has
become a social phenomenon today.
It’s also terrifying to think of how
something like Weird Twitter can
cause such a blunt impact on online
culture. But eventually, as Kevin
pointed out, everyone is going to
have to log off.
“Twitter is a great website, but
you can only be on it for so long
before your brain melts, for good.”
I have been staring into the
abyss for a while now. And
honestly, I’m not sure it’s staring
back. It might be, but really it’s a
bit difficult to tell. The abyss’ gaze
seems to wander over a whole
lot, and to say I’m a particular
focus probably isn’t correct. To
be completely frank, it might be
looking at any number of things
—
underwhelming
sentient
televisions,
rapid-fire
false
equivalencies, speculative urban
development, etc. — but I can’t tell
what because the abyss is sporting
a pair of pixelated sunglasses.
This abyss is named @Dril, by
the way.
@Dril lives in the dimly lit
corners of the Twitter-verse,
little-reached regions that are
entirely alien to me. He’s one of the
most famous of a loose collection
of people casually referred to as
“Weird Twitter,” a sort of Internet
sub-culture
that,
until
now,
hasn’t intersected with my own
existence. Somehow, despite living
in an age in which it’s the favored
vehicle of invective for a certain
former reality television star, I
have never so much as entered
the Twitter URL before this week
(which is why, I suppose, I’ve been
asked to write this). So to plunge
headfirst into the phenomenon
of Weird Twitter has been sort
of like trying to watch a Samuel
Beckett play after first imbibing
a couple hundred micrograms of
Tim Leary’s favorite nutritional
supplement.
Weird
Twitter
itself,
I’ve
learned, is a sort of amorphous
collection
of
typically
pseudonymous
Twitter-users
who have a penchant for the
bizarre, satirical, absurd and
generalized drollery. In short,
they’re the sort of crowd who in
all likelihood would mirthfully
mock and roll their eyes at what
I’m about to try to do, i.e., “get”
them. But they’re probably not
going to read this anyway, so here
goes.
After careful consideration,
I
have
concluded
that
the
existence and ethos of Weird
Twitter — like most everything
else — perfectly align with my
Almost Comprehensive Theory
of Existence in the Postmodern
American Era.
But
seriously,
while
the
ACTEPAE doesn’t actually exist,
I do think there are a number
of
characteristics
of
Weird
Twitter that can be viewed as
microcosms of society at large,
particularly in regard to the socio-
political developments of the
last few decades (and especially
the last few months). The most
prevalent of these is probably the
overwhelming ubiquity of irony.
We live in a culture that’s
saturated with sarcasm. I won’t
bother listing many examples
because it’s next to impossible that
you don’t know what I’m talking
about, but to give one, there’s the
fact that for nine years one of
the most watched late-night TV
shows (“The Colbert Report”)
starred a character who literally
never spoke unironically. My own
generation, in particular, seems to
be extraordinarily deft at this sort
of thing — and I include myself in
that characterization. It’s certainly
not uncommon for me to have an
entire conversation with a friend
using the sort of straight-tone
sarcasm that leaves some people
from older generations (e.g., my
mother) baffled at the turn of the
talk. We’re the generation who
can casually suggest that the
appropriate retributive response
to a perceived slight is an action
that would make Hammurabi look
like the author of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights,
all without our conversational
partner batting an eye.
Hardly ever would our words
be regarded as literal by our
peers. Despite the fact that we no
longer go through the same type
of baroque contortions to signify
our use of sarcasm, as did previous
groups,
we
almost
perfectly
understand one another. We have
developed our own subdermal
language beneath the spoken/
written word, a jargon built as
an imago to the vernacular. One
discerns intent primarily through
anticipation of insincerity.
The reasons why we do this
are more opaque, but I grow more
and more convinced as time goes
on that irony today principally
functions as an antidote to (or
fortification against) pain. No
matter what your politics are,
most of us can agree that the
world today is generally what
could be classified as “screwed
up” — and while we might know,
objectively, that it’s on the whole
a lot better than it was in the past,
we feel acutely all the anxieties
and discomforts of living in a
flawed planet that increasingly
appears to lead an absurd and
meaningless existence in the
galactic
boondocks.
Almost
certainly this collective existential
dread stems from the newfound
interconnectivity of the world,
and the omnipresence of 24-hour
mass media, but knowledge of the
conduits doesn’t do anything to
mitigate the feeling. But coming
at this pain obliquely via irony
certainly takes off the edge.
Explanations
as
to
why
(with respect to the “screw[ed]
up[ness]”)
differ
greatly,
of
course, but my personal view is,
to a great extent, derived from
observations about the culture of
postmodernity, especially in this
country. To me, one of our main
problems lies in the misalignment
of our value systems, which
springs principally from our
economic model. For instance,
in contemporary parlance the
words “value” (n. in the financial
sense) and worth (n. in the
definitional sense) have come to
be inextricably bound-up with
one another, circuitously leading
to such absurdities as a belief in
the automatic virtue of the rich,
or the cult of wealth — warped
perspectives
that
no
doubt
contributed to the calamitous
consummation our country will
be undergoing tomorrow at noon.
Though it’s not as if this mindset
is new: Albert Camus noted it
in his day, remarking, “A man
wants to earn money in order to
be happy, and his whole effort and
the best of a life are devoted to the
earning of that money. Happiness
is forgotten; the means are taken
for the end.” A person confuses the
value of something with its worth,
and sets up the false equation of
“money = happiness.” These same
concerns that troubled Camus
when he was developing his views
on absurdism are pertinent today.
And it’s not just this value vs.
worth confusion that’s the issue
in postmodern life — one of the
worst culprits in our collective
malcontentment is the sheer
biting dullness of it all. Most of
us go through our limited days
following
an
unimaginative
rubric that goes something like
this: childhood, high school,
college, nine-to-five job, spouse,
kids, social security paycheck,
retirement and la fin. In our free
time we’re concerned with our
lawns, our houses, our cars, the
next winner of The Voice and
all the other humdrum bullshit
that’s part of a standard-issue
postmodern existence c. 2017.
We use these minutiae to try to
find fulfillment, but somehow it
still eludes our grasp — hence, the
perception that it’s all “screwed
up.”
Throw a bit of the recent
political scene into the mix and
it just exacerbates the problem.
The colossal absurdity of it all
still makes one’s mind spin.
We’ve come to such a point in
our crisis of culture that the
previously
referenced
former
reality television star has been
selected to lead the free world.
That such a man, who is easily
the most mendacious candidate
in history and whose maladroit
syntax scrambles the senses,
could achieve the highest office in
the nation is troubling, to say the
least. But the fact that so many of
us can still sit here and pretend
that we — as a culture — were
asymptomatic prior to this, that
what has happened doesn’t have
anything to do with how we live,
is perhaps more surprising. No
wonder “surreal” managed to
be
named
Merriam-Webster’s
2016’s word of the year. With all
this strangeness floating around,
the present moment has honestly
turned out to be a breakdown
of
Baudrillardian
magnitude.
Scheming billionaires, corrupt
officials, Russian cabals — the
whole thing is really turning into a
bad satire of a Bond movie without
the love-interest.
All of which, believe it or not,
brings me back to Weird Twitter.
Because even though they offer
their message 140 characters at a
time and don’t spend 1,000 words
prattling on about the perils of
postmodernity, they get it. Maybe
they don’t ever articulate it in
quite the same way as I do, but
the more I read their tweets the
more I become convinced they
understand that our society has
come to a crisis of culture, and
that this crisis stems from the
way we view and experience the
world. Sure, some of their stuff is
mindless shitposting, but if you
look past the irony and absurdity
and vulgarity often you’ll find a
message containing a keen social
critique.
Some of those from Weird
Twitter realize it too. At the
heart of the Weird Twitter
political scene is a collective
known as Chapo Trap House,
a group of three core members
who originally came together to
do an ad-hoc radio comedy show
mocking the then-recent film “13
Hours,” by Hollywood director
and
part-time
conservative
propagandist
Michael
“more-
explosions-is-always-better”
Bay. But CTH ended up sticking
together, and have since been
producing
a
profanity-laced,
firmly
leftist
(not
“liberal”)
podcast that has been perhaps
the loudest voice in the self-titled
“Dirtbag Left.”
CTH has had a real run of
it in recent months, the pack
of
vulgarians
turning
their
vituperative scorn on the short-
fingered vulgarian. But following
the failure of Hillary Clinton’s
campaign especially, CTH has
turned much of its ridicule
toward other targets closer to
home, namely, they lambast the
sort of lackadaisical liberals who
they feel handed the nomination
to Clinton, and subsequently,
the presidency to Trump. They
demand a left that is more resolute
in its convictions and fierce in
its fights, mocking those in the
Democratic Party who lacked
either the passion or the courage
— or maybe both — to truly stand
up for the ideals of the left in the
same sort of invigorating way that
an FDR or JFK might have.
And certainly CTH has been
noticed; in November, The New
Yorker ran an article about them
and their future (though am I the
only one that finds it strange that
CTH agreed to be interviewed
by a publication which is exactly
the sort of liberal elitist snobbery
they rail against? The New Yorker
spells it “élitist,” for God’s sake).
But it will be interesting to watch
where they go from this point
forward, particularly as it pertains
to the reform of the American left.
But in my view CTH, and
Weird Twitter as a whole, faces a
very real challenge to its efficacy
as an agent of change. And this
challenge comes from within itself
— just as I have spent the last few
days gazing into the abyss of Weird
Twitter, so too has Weird Twitter
spent its lifetime gazing into the
abyss of our reality, and they
would do well to remember the
first half of that Nietzsche quote:
“He who fights with monsters
should look to it that he himself
does not become a monster.” For
mockery and ridicule will only get
one so far. Perhaps I sound like a
follower of Burke or a Girondin
or some such thing, but to me one
must not only tear down, but also
build up. To commentate is easy —
creation is harder.
SAM ROSENBERG
Daily Arts Writer
@absurdity: The
societal breakdown of
postmodernity
B-SIDE
DAYTON HARE
Senior Arts Editor