A hot topic on twitter tonight, as thousands rub elbows in the final hours of SXSW isn’t the lineup of artists and performers that grace the many stages across Austin. Instead, scores of people are tweeting what may be their most lasting memory of the annual festival of music, film and emerging technologies:  the shared community of  the bathroom line as they cross their legs and dance nervously while waiting an hour outside the loo at the @perezhilton party. (We’re #notfollowing him, btw.)

Women are used to spending a lot of time in bathroom lines, so it’s not surprising to find @disasterology making the best of it:

When more people are standing in line to pee than are actually enjoying the event, that is newsworthy. Not front page news, but definitely worth a mention.

Regardless of how much praise you got from Mom every time you successfully tinkled like a big girl, it’s not news.

What some people don’t consider when posting personal info like this is that the world knows you gotta go. Think for just a moment – is this gem something you’d like retweeted around the globe? Sure, you can “protect” your tweets so only a few people are offended by your bathroom habits, but trust us, we can’t help you, and we’re probably eating lunch, so please, just stop!

And then there are people like @shayisokay, who doesn’t need help from anyone.

Now we’ve lost our appetite. Thanks.

Remember when you were a kid and you would rub your eyes really hard and you would see stars, and it was almost like your own private fireworks show, except there was no Grand Finale? Mom told us that was bad for our eyes and would make us go blind. She said that about sitting too close to the television, too, and something else that our brothers wouldn’t talk about in front of us.

We’re going to show you something so horrifying, so life-altering, so disturbing that once look you wish you could unsee it, but by then it will be too late. Like an accident at the side of the road, you’ll be both attracted and repulsed, and it will be hard to look away. After even the briefest exposure, the image will be burned into your brain forever. You’ll wish that, for just a moment, you were not cursed with the sense of sight.

Look away now.

We mean it.

Save yourself and go back to twitter.

That image is this:

We warned you.

Yes, it’s Danny DeVito. The real deal. And that’s his avatar.



We just hope he’s wearing pants.

Send in the Fail Bird! Tell Danny you saw him on Twitter Fail

Hey handsome, you want some company?

What do you mean, a “date?”

Yeah, you know, follow me and I’ll follow you. It’ll be nice.

Follow you? What does that cost?

Not much. Just read my tweets.

Is that all? Are you sure?

Well, if you want a little more interaction, I’ll send you some spam, and DM you an affiliate link or two. Nothing big. A girl’s gotta eat, you know, and leopard-skin spandex doesn’t come cheap.

Okay, this is a bust. You’re under arrest for #followerwhoring.

—
That’s how we imagine it going down, and in that little daydream, there’s lots of pistol-whipping and other virtual police brutality.

We were first made aware of the term #followerwhoring when Honorary Fail Bird Handler @Bytor asked us if we’d help popularize it. For all future twitter generations, this term was coined on August 17, 2009:

The definition of a #followerwhore is: Tweeple who follow zillions of others (usu. by #search search, not because they like you) hoping you follow back sans thinking. We instantly agreed with this definiton, partly because we hate spammers, but mostly because he used the word “sans” in a sentence. That’s classy stuff.

You can follow our example and call out the #followerwhores. It’s a great way to express your frustration at the frequent appearance of the fail whale. All that spam and follower whoring uses up resources that overload twitter and bog it down when the rest of us are trying to connect with our buds.

He did have one point of clarification (and again we agree with him, because we like agreeing with smart people): There’s two classes of #followerwhores. The first is the evil spammer a-holes we’ve already discussed. The second group, in a misguided attempt to be loved, follow a bunch of people, so that lots of people will follow them. Just like the girl in high school who is popular for all the wrong reasons (Hi Marcia!), these clueless twitter sluts are being used right back.

Send in the Fail Bird! Tell them you saw them on Twitter Fail

Flattery is the most imitation form of sincerity. Or something like that.

Everyone has a childhood hero they look up to. For most of us, our heroes were positive role models who taught us to be good people. Smokey the Bear showed us the importance of fire safety, Superman stood for “Truth, Justice and the American Way,” and Donna Reed taught us to clean house in a dress and high heels. Never mind that our house was more like a cross between Bewitched and The Little Rascals than Leave it to Beaver. While we played with our Barbies, at a time when horses talked and you could drive your mother, those positive messages helped us to believe that all was right in the world.

We think @stevebuelow had a different childhood hero than we did. See if you can guess who that might be.

There’s a point where friendly compliments cross the line and turn into effusive flattery. It ends up making the person sound phony, and like Wally and The Beav, makes us want to hurl.

By the way, Mrs. Cleaver, that’s a lovely dress you’re wearing.

Send in the Fail Bird! Tell them you saw them on twitter-fail

In a room shrouded in darkness and stinking of death both fresh and ancient, as an emaciated rat scuttles across the floor, an exhausted Steven Seagal slumps, chained to a chair. A scarred table separates him from his captor on the other side of the bare lightbulb. A voice startles him; a woman. Honey and spice wrapped in a Spanish accent, the voice drowns him with question after question for which there are no answers. He tries to respond, but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t stop…

In our world, that scene would probably look something like this:

Unfortunately, while yakking away like Lucy with an 8-ball, poor @gailkime totally misses the response she so desperately desires:

 (PS: Mr Seagal, please don’t kick our ass. We bruise easily.)

Send in the Fail Bird! Tell them you saw them on twitter-fail