They’re dead, Dave

Everybody, Dave. Everybody’s dead, Dave. They’re all dead. Everybody’s dead, Dave.

…and so began the best scifi comedy series, ever.

Which brings us to LOST, which wasn’t a comedy at all. Or, so we assume. We watched part of the first episode, and kept up with the story line by watching The Soup. Just in case we missed something, our friend, @tremendousnews recapped the full 6 seasons in 60 seconds. He’s a genius.

Sorry, we probably should have said “spoiler alert.” But, in case you missed it, they’re all dead. Were dead the whole time. We’re guessing the writers were hallucinating their way through another season when the brass upstairs told them they had to bring this to a close. Suspension of disbelief can evidently be stretched just so far. So, like all good writers, they hunkered down to wrap everything up, all nice and clean.

Ha! We’re kidding. They were so far out on a limb, there was nothing left but air, so they thought, “what the hell, we’ll just say they were dead all the time. Kind of a Jacob’s Ladder-Dallas-Sixth Sense sort of thing. But with spooky smoke monsters and hugging. It will be awesome!”

Why didn’t we watch Lost? Because we hate remakes, and Gilligan’s Island was a Classic. It’s a pretty safe bet that Lost never featured a computer made with coconuts and bamboo. And, you never saw anyone on Lost in an evening gown. You don’t mess with perfection like that.

We couldn’t figure out why Lost lasted six seasons. But we’re not as confused as this guy:

Would anyone like any toast?

Is there an echo in here?

What’s the sweetest sound in the world? Dale Carnegie said it’s the sound of your own name.* Calling someone by their name is the quickest way to grab and hold their attention. If you say it often enough, but not enough to become an annoying twit (Hi Marcia!), it also influences them subconsciously to like you.

We’re thinking @TamelaJaeger likes herself a lot. So much so, that when she wasn’t hearing her name mentioned enough by other people, she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Since she is “the founder of 100% photo real human skin texturing in 3D,” we’re not sure whether @TamelaJaeger is real or Memorex, but like a misfiring Stepford Wife, repeating herself is now completely out of control.

Okay, so she’s repeating and retweeting herself. It couldn’t get any sillier than that.

Oops. We spoke too soon.

Retweeting a #FF recommendation so the people following her will see someone else recommended her for Follow Friday, so they can…what? Follow her? Or maybe they’ll want to jump on the #FF bandwagon and #FF her, so she can retweet that? This has the potential to create an endless loop that could cause the internets to spin in on themselves and create a rift in the time-space continuum, which will bring reality as we know it to an end.

Or not.

Either way, would someone please whack the side of the twitter cabinet ?

Thanks.

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

*Wikipedia is our bible: Dale Carnegie

More Numbers! More Games!

When twitter introduced lists on October 16, 2009 (relax, there will not be a test) to “make it easier to curate tweets into meaningful real-time experiences” people jumped right on board, creating lists of their favorite friends, funny people, or (ugh) celebrities, so they no longer had to slog through their timeline to find the stuff they really want to read.

Of course, like every good thing that comes along, this gave spammers and followerwhores new ways to game the system and polish the illusion of popularity they crave. It’s no shocker that the number of lists you are on is just as insignificant as the number of people following you.

“What?” You say, “lists are valuable tools that show just how many people truly love us!!” To which we respond, Pish Tosh.

Let’s start with @osen, shall we? With only 33 tweets, they managed to game their numbers to get over 9000 followers. With twitter’s following limits, it appears that they lost at least 20,000 followers, but still managed to get on 40 lists, even though they didn’t tweet for almost an entire year.

@H_H_H, who is not the Triple H of WWE fame, has put the least effort into maintaining his account, with 2 tweets in March 2009, yet 1476 misguided “fans” are following his silence, and added him to 22 lists.

@AloeTropical is into the twitter numbers game prime time. With a total of 32 tweets, they’ve manipulated their way to nearly 25,000 followers. Who wouldn’t follow to get such valuable information as “Happy Tweeting!” “Happy Thanksgiving” and “zzzzzzzzzGood Morning.” They only tweeted 6 times since twitter lists were introduced, yet still manage to get on 119 lists.

Then there’s @ProfessorGAcom, who, although he claims “slow and steady wins the race,” rocketed to the 2000 following limit in just 9 days, amassing a total of 23 lists, for the minimal effort of posting just 11 tweets.

The star of the show, for fully harnessing the power of twitter lists is @n2mtweets, who, on one single day posted a total of 14 tweets about his twitter lists (and nothing else) and has managed to get listed 73 times.

Since twitter doesn’t limit the number of accounts one person can have, it’s easy for superficial people who want to appear popular (Hi Marcia!) to create a bunch of accounts so they can put themselves on a bunch of lists, in the same way that they can create a bunch of accounts so they can follow and retweet themselves.

Not all lists are created by friends and fans, so the numbers are also inflated by those of us who use some of our lists for other purposes: To send a message about the bad guys, gamers and idiots we are definitely not following.

If your head is inflated from the number of lists in your stats, consider the following:
@Keeping_It_Real/get-more-followers-douche
@AmericanLady49/SCUMBAGDemocratsontwitter
@AmericanLady49/braindeadsickpeople
@richrecruiter/spammers
@tweet_fail/bots-to-block

There’s a lot more where those came from. You can search http://listorious.com to find more of the same, as well as some lists you might want to follow, IF you find them interesting.

In a perfect world, the number of followers you have, and the lists you are on, would mean that you have friends and fans, reach and influence. On twitter, it just means you know how to play the game. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again (and most likely, again and again, and again) the numbers really mean nothing, if no one is listening.

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

Hey Batter Batter

Our player, @boydazz steps up to the plate, and takes a pitch.

Strike One!


Is @smashlee227 following @boydazz?

 
Undaunted, he chokes up on the bat and swings again.
 
Strike Two!


Does @ChristinaLJ follow @boydazz?

 
No way is he going to walk away from the plate now.
 
Strike Three!


Does @mollycool follow @boydazz?

 
No matter how well he spins it, @boydazz isn’t going to make it to first base.
 

 
Perhaps you can give him some advice in the comments.

 
Thanks to Honorary Fail Bird Handler @mollycool for inadvertently bringing this fail to our attention.

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