Vulture Magazine The Michaelmas Issue 2013 | Page 31

weird twitter:
why the tweet is the new sonnet
Ellie Shaw

'weird twitter refers to a loosely connected group of Twitter users who are known to experiment
with spelling, punctuation and format for humour or poetry. The style of writing can be considered surrealist by participants in the group, with subject matter ranging from creating absurd scenarios to attempting to describe abstract feelings by choosing words for their “verbal
aesthetic appeal.” However, many of the accounts are grouped together by the same desire to
reinterpret the “realness” of life in ways people do not always get to experience' - knowyourmeme
Old sport @gossipstones: And in that infinity, I swear we
were only a moment
Jomny Sun @jonnysun: corect directions are importamt, for
example: i lov u bc ur the only girl thats right for me i
lov u bc ur the only girl thats left for me
Kimmy @ARealLiveGhost: they will hook me up to a polygraph
and ask me if I love you and I will say no but the needle
will jump and sputter exactly how you laugh
NOVOEIRO @fuckliterature: Eve is a working girl, of sorts.
Her fuck-me-red lipstick comes off on her teeth but she rubs
her feet on mine when she’s falling asleep.
A @spaceglove: I suspect the mechanism that helps me out
of infinite regressions is the same one that wakes me from
dreams where I die
no @tbhratchet: hell is a room where the wallpapers are all
your failed selfies
Horse e books @Horse_ebooks: Everything happens so much

F

orget haikus, sonnets, limericks, ballads,
epics - the tweet is the new poetic form.
Behind the blue ticks and the smug celebrities
lies a creative underworld of poets, comedians
and philosophers using the 140-character limit
to push the confines of poetic expression. This
constraint means poetic output is condensed,
crystallized into a form that holds your attention and does not require any collaborative
reading effort. And you can 'fave' it for later.
This is the world of Weird Twitter. It's the
magical, closed-off underbelly of social media,
exclusive to those with an imaginative heteronym, but also inclusive to those who click
the 'follow' button. Upon appearance, it's a
labyrinthine universe of in-jokes and weird
forms, but if you look a little closer and invest yourself into the portable anthology of

instant poetry, you can experience something
wonderfully alien yet fiercely personal, funny yet poignant, technologically realized but
profoundly human. When I was in primary
school, if you wanted to be a writer, you were
told to carry a notebook around with you; with
this manifestation of social media, not only do
you have a notebook on your person but you
can instantly and permanently publish any
scribble, doodle, or random thought. Blessing
or curse? While this does mean some thoughts
remain unfiltered, it provides instant reaction
to your 'work' through favourites, follows and
retweets. Behind the glossy, irritating veneer of
hashtags and tweeting pictures of your food is a
creative underworld, a microcosmic, totally independent organism of a community, ready to
retweet your otherwise ??????????????????)????????????????????????????????????((0