Judging from the
fact that most of you came to this particular page through Facebook,
I’m guessing most of us are no stranger to the social media anymore. Or are you? Today
I saw a picture being shared furiously on the aforementioned social network,
which explained eight different social media in a funny way. What was less
funny to me was the fact that I had never heard of five of them: foursquare, Instagram, Pinterest, Last.fm and G+ are total strangers to me. (Okay, I know G+ stands for Google+ but
I have no idea how it works).
So that’s five out
of eight, but which three are missing? Obviously the most popular ones, since
even I know them. There’s Facebook, duh. YouTube, that’s another
one. And finally there’s Twitter – which
only last week was in the news.
The occasion was
that recently the first major study was concluded as to the relevance of Twitter. As you probably know, this rapidly
growing microblogging service enables its users to send and read text-based
posts of up to 140 characters. Some use it for personal reasons, as a kind of
online version of cell-phone text messages (sms), while others follow or write tweets in a more professional context,
like the political media or cultural scene. The conclusion of the study was
that a good tweet is relatively rare.
It seems only 36% percent of them are experienced by the users as
‘interesting’.
Of course this is a
difficult criterion. Suppose I asked you to rate your current email inbox. What
percentage would you rate as ‘interesting’? Moreover, if a certain account you
follow on Twitter is not interesting
anymore, you can easily unfollow it. Indeed, whereas with Facebook you need permission to follow someone’s account, with Twitter you can instantly follow anyone
you want. Personally, for instance, I follow @BarackObama, @ParisHilton and
even @jesus. The sky is the limit, pardon the pun.
Which brings me to
the following. To give you a small sample of how Twitter works, I thought I’d give you a selection of Ricky Gervais’
tweets. Besides an outrageously funny
comic, he’s an animal rights activist, a humanitarian and a convinced atheist.
Above all, Ricky Gervais is not afraid to speak his mind about what he believes
in.
About God and religion,
for instance. A while ago Gervais got caught up in a discussion about religious
matters. I don’t know exactly when it started, but it seemed to speed up after
this tweet:
@rickygervais
And this photo is NOT me a dressed as Jesus. It's from The Invention Of Lying.
And even if it was, so fucking what? http://pic.twitter.com/DhOD7lF1
20
Jan
What followed was a
veritable bombardment of Gervais on Twitter
by people who tried to convince him to believe in this or that God or religion.
Here’s some of the funnier ones (in quotes “ ”), most of the time with Gervais’ answers immediately
following:
@rickygervais
“@HerNameIsDawn: @rickygervais What do you think happens to the mind after you
die?” The same as what happens to your voice
24
Jan
@rickygervais
“@ckleass: do you have any friends who r Christian?” Yes. & Jewish &
Muslim. I've also friends who love GLEE. We don't have to always agree
25
Jan
@rickygervais
Ask yourself why you don't believe in all the other gods. Your answer, is why I
don't believe in yours. This endeth the religious tweets.
25
Jan
@rickygervais
“@jskrew: I believe in Santa Claus and the Easter bunny- what religion is
that?" As valid as any other.
29
Jan
@rickygervais
“@LeoDukes: Here's a thought! I'm a fan who enjoys your works, but Im sick of
you going on about religion. Should I stop following?” Yes
1
Feb
@rickygervais
“@ChallonGoodeRVC: @lewisdent @billybasset1 there's heaps of proof of Gods
existence!” Go on...?
3
Feb
@rickygervais
“@Graeme289: oh man give it a rest about god .....” Sorry for tweeting you all
the time Graeme I...oh hold on, YOU'RE following ME. #gorp
3
Feb
Now who said comedy
and philosophy couldn’t go together?
Ricky, if we had
one, we would award you the 2012 Fred and Fred prize!
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