For anyone who isn’t a regular twitter user, this post will probably make little sense, so I’ll try and unravel it slowly, rather than at the 140 characters maximum speed of light that twitter operates at.
Each day, twitter lists top ‘trending topics’, which could be on any subject - some serious, some not so serious. The cowfilms thread is definetely on the silly side - basically, make any connection between a film title and a cow related theme.
Here are a few of my favourite 10 so far:
- Moo Cowsand and One: A Steak Udderssey - @julianyon
- The Cud, the Bad and the Ungulate - @ginpitwarrior
- Bonfire of the Vachequirits
- Friesian Loathing In Las Vegas - @scoop_cooper
- 24 Hour Patty People (featuring Happy Moodays)
- The Cudfather
- Cry Friesian - @davidschneider (of Alan Partridge fame)
- Methane, myself and Irene @rumdoodle
- There Will Brie Cud
- Ruminator 2 : Cudgement Day
So what’s so great about this obviously pointless and frivolous waste of time? Well, actually, if they say that laughter is the best medicine, then this thread is the best stuff in the cabinet. In some respects, it feels like the internet can turn into one big pub conversation - yet no-one has to pay a penny to get their round in, and there’s no side effects to this humour pill, apart from a little bit of procrastination.
Now I know that I’m part of the fortunate digital elite, and that I can dip in and out of twitter as I please - some workplaces have quite wisely cracked down on internet usage, and not everyone has the internet at home.
But there’s another serious side to all this - today’s big twitter topic may have been humour related (there’s another thread going about blaming everything on P Diddy), but at other times, the top trends are politically related, as we saw when the UK truly dominated the twitter charts two weeks ago when Nick Griffin appeared on Question Time. For non-British readers, Nick Griffin is the leader of the far-right, racially motivated, British National Party.
Another top trending topic today has been the elections in Iran. Now there was a lot of media attention back when the elections were first run, and a lot of people were able to get their opinions out on twitter. This time round, on the 30th anniversary of the US embassy hostage crisis, we’re hearing calls of support for the USA, rather than the usual death chants.
So, let’s say long live twitter, and long live the American dream which created it, all the way from the farms of Nebraska.
