Twitter: Taking a Stroll Down Memory Lane
The Real Thug Life
It’s official: Twitter is the reincarnation of 7th grade.
When I was in middle school, I desperately longed to be one of the cool kids. You know, the ones who sat in the back of the room, “working” on their group project, but actually listening to the Bloodhound Gang’s take on human biology through headphones hidden in their sleeves and a CD player hidden in their desk. Instead, I used that 45-minute period to actually work, fearing a bad grade or some other repercussion. And in the end, we all got As and I threw my book through a window.
As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one. But somewhere around 11th grade, I hit a happy medium. Leaving both groups behind, I wondered what would eventually become of them. Fast forward to a decade later: they’ve been found. Their place of residence? Twitter.
Twitter has become that middle school classroom, where the serious look down on/ignore the class clowns for doing exactly what they so want to do themselves: have fun. Today’s serious students, or “Twitterati”, use Twitter for noble means: reporting on breaking news, media atrocities, social issues and daily deep thoughts. Sarah Palin’s latest gaffe? Check! Rachel Maddow’s thoughts on the Tea Party? Definitely. But to their chagrin the cool kids, partly reincarnated as the popular #thuglife contingent, have done it again—daring to ignore the rules, using Twitter innovatively, and finding new ways to beat the system.
The premise is simple. The Thuglife contributors tweet the “ ‘baddest’ thing they’ve ever done, as like a thug”. For example, @radiomuzik_twan writes, “Just gave the lady at Mcdonald’s a Canadian coin and got away with it.. #thuglife.” Or another twitter user , “You stole money from your mom’s purse and when she caught you and asked about it you said #Thuglife.” The tweets are meant to be funny, and the best are often retweeted, allowing Thuglife to dominate the Trending Topics list on a regular basis. Just like how the popular kids use to dominate back in the day.
So what can we learn from Thuglife and the like? That technology will always evolve, and those who follow the rules will not always end up on top. And when the ultimate goal is to be widely read, anything goes. The popularity of Thuglife also shows us that people like to have fun, no matter time nor place. Those wishing to take advantage of social-media platforms for business purposes would do well to learn this lesson fast—there’s a huge audience of inner 7th graders out there, longing to be cool and waiting for the next best thing.
Courtesy of AdvertisingAge
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