twitter fail blog
sharing the good, and exposing the best of the worst on twitter
The Bloggess is Not a Douche-Canoe
In our last post, we used the phrase “douche-canoe” to describe an idiot we regretting following in the first place. You probably know it’s our practice to avoid following “online marketing superman” and “social media guru” types, but occasionally, one sneaks in without us realizing it. Usually, they start out as normal people, just making connections on twitter, and then they play the follower game until their numbers make them appear to be influential, and their ego grows in a direct relationship to their inflated follower count. When we discover we’re following these posers, we unfollow, but in the case of this particular douche-canoe, it wasn’t soon enough
Unfortunately, to at least one person, it appeared as if we were calling @thebloggess a douche-canoe. Not even. We think she is awesome, and read her blog religiously. In fact, since we haven’t been to church in years, you might say The Bloggess is our religion.
We failed. The reason for the confusion is totally ours. “Douche-canoe” was originally coined on the now defunct (and we miss it terribly) column: Ask the Bloggess. We wanted to link to the definition, and since that column is now gone, we searched backwards through her entire blog, and found the first reference was November 20, 2009. Although we thoroughly enjoyed the research (she says douche-canoe a lot), it didn’t seem appropriate to link to that blog post, so we linked to her blog. Without explaining why we did so, it looked like we were calling her a douche-canoe.
No way. Jenny is awesome. Read her blog, and you’ll see why everyone loves her. It’s not just us.
PS: Jenny isn’t the one who thought we called her a douche-canoe. It was @jackassletters, to whom we owe a debt of gratitude. We don’t want to do anything that might make Jenny feel stabby.
The best twitter song ever
We didn’t get a Shorty Award last year. We got like a total of 238 votes, or something equally pathetic, so we pretended they didn’t exist, so it didn’t matter.
We did even better this year, because we weren’t nominated at all, and got zero votes, so the Shorty Awards proved we don’t exist. Perfection.
In other twitter-related, and nonexistant contest news: Amanda Palmer was actually at the Shorty Awards Presentation, and played the ukelele while singing some of the years lamest tweets posted by celebrities we don’t care about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHEjQdhMNtk
(With any luck, YouTube will post a notice that this video can’t be embedded, which would be the perfect post-script)
A Class Act
When we woke up this morning, we had a message from alert Honorary Fail Bird Handler @AMtwo that made us all tingly all over. This is the kind of fails that make our day as beautiful as lasers at a rock concert:
The link was to a copy of this awesome tweet:
The Red Cross is manned (and womanned) by a bunch of hard working folks. We love the Red Cross, ever since they rescued the Fail Bird Handler, and her little girl, in a blizzard several years ago. There is nothing more exhilarating, after being stuck sideways in a ditch on the wrong side of the road in a Plymouth Horizon for 10 hours, as the snow slowly buried the car and her occupants, than the sight of an Army Half Track vehicle cresting the hill ahead, followed by a white van with a big red cross on the side. We’ve donated regularly and often since that day, and would happily buy a beer for anyone who works there.
Some people don’t feel as we do, and that tweet could have turned into a PR disaster. They quickly removed the tweet, and instead of waiting for everyone else to start pointing fingers, poked some fun at themselves:
There are many ways the Red Cross could have handled this mess, and they made the right choice. They showed everyone that they are not a big, faceless corporation, but rather, a collection of real people. Every PR agency should take note of the classy way they handled their fumble.
But it gets even better. Dogfish Head Brewery stepped up and, instead of capitalizing on the namedrop, asked their fans to donate to the Red Cross. A class act, followed by another class act.
Pop over to the Red Cross and donate a bit of your beer money for the week. Help real people help real people in need.
And, if you’ve already done so, this mama and her little girl thank you very much.
Got my eye on you
Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito met in the ring last night, and Margarito got the raw end of the deal. Especially his eye. His eye definitely got the worst of it. In the “olden days,” a fighter, after losing a big bout, would be able to go home, get some rest, and wait for the papers to slaughter him in the morning.
But this is the golden age of twitter, and everything, everywhere, becomes the stuff of instant commentary. Before the fight ended, and new hashtag #margaritoseye was born. We’ve picked the best/worst of the pack.
If you’re not a boxing fan, you’ll probably want to skip this one. Instead, read about toad safety or dogs and cats and come back later.
What do you think? Can you do better? Give it your best shot in the comments.
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