Things that twitter has taught me

Well, it’s about a year since I actively joined twitter. 12 months (or so) down the line here is the report card of things I have learnt.

News

Through twitter I have come to know the real definition of breaking news. Gone are the days when news used to break into my ears in slow motion. When I say breaking news I mean all news. Not that sonko news you see on TV. The larger the number of people that you follow, the larger the number of reporters that you will have acquired. On a typical day you will get political news, social news, traffic news, accidents (some of them accurately report an accident before it even occurs), weather news, analyses (from actual experts), academic news, rumors, entertainment news, fapping news…and all other news that you might think of. The good part is the news is reported at the instance it occurs. One doesn’t have to pass it through politically incorrect news editors to get approval. Since it has to be reported in less than 140 characters, it is brief and to the point.   

Jgichuru

There is this enfant terrible known as Julie Gichuru. Twitter has a different definition of her. To non-tweeps, she is the citizen TV anchor and head of digital broadcasting at Royal Media. To others she is totally different person. I might run out of adjectives of describing how she makes some people (men & women) feel. She is fondly called head milf. That word means the Moms I Would Like To Forgive-me-for-using-this-bad-word-here. Any negative thing said about her or her abilities in front of the screen is always met by unyielding reproach from most (if not all corners of the tworld). She is monitored wherever she goes. Last time she was tracked up to some interview she was giving at capital fm, needless to say it was fully documented for those who had no radios near them.

Prime ridicule

Twitter is the home of connoisseurs in ridicule, name calling and skinning others alive. If you like spewing dumb things that are mostly against the common grain of people’s thoughts, twitter is not for you. If you insist, then develop a very thick skin. Thicker than the thickest hippo. Or you can as well avoid it completely. If you are a football fan and your team loses over the weekend, you better avoid it for a while. People like kalekye, sonko, Torres, arsenal fans, kalonzo, ‘dumb ass’ Alai have seen their days on the frying pan.

Grammar Nazi

Structuring a tweet to fit the 140 characters limit is not the only woe that one undergoes while tweeting. Thou shall not commit a glaring grammar mistake. Unlike other platforms, you will not be excused for misspelling words carelessly. Of course you will notice your mistake after hitting the tweet button. Before you scuttle to delete it, somebody will have retweeted it for the world to judge how a dim-witted you are.

Awesome bloggers

Tweeter introduced me to the world of blogging. I never understood what it was all about till I joined it. I knew it was done just by actual experts, geeks, professional writers and other kinds of people other than me. I came to notice that anybody can blog. Twitter is the home of some of the best writers Kenya has. These people actually make mind boggling love to words after an extended foreplay, and then later cuddle with them. Reading their work is like watching porn. This inspired me to start my own shamba here! Though my sex with words is not full of intricate techniques, has no foreplay, no cuddling and possibly lasts for 10 seconds, hell I also have sex with words. That’s what matters to me.  

Got to love these elements

Joining twitter requires you to love some entities that the crowd adores. Jgichuru is one of them. Others include Adele, Capital fm, the cipher, Campmulla. You may not like what they stand for but you gotta love them. Or at least know what they are all about. For those who do not know, Adele is some young, slightly plump bri_ish singer who sings slow and boring RnB songs that magically turn out to be actually good for your ears. Capital fm is a Kenyan radio station which has presenters using words such as ‘capirro fm’ ‘mobo phone’ ‘good mening’ ‘sarit center’ ‘juction’ ‘entrance is just 2000 shillings’, ‘twirra’ ‘trip to malindi’ and other alien words to a below average income earning Kenyan. The cipher is a program in capital fm aired on Saturday and Sunday evening playing songs done by people tired of singing or have no singing voice, and so they talk through the songs. Campmulla is not a camp in Maasai Mara. It is a Kenyan music group playing crazy music with a real possibility of putting Kenya on the world map.

Nu words

Of course new words are coined in twitter every day. I will not say what words like cosign, Subaru, fapping…the list goes on...means.  It is the responsibility of one to find out the meaning of these words as soon as possible lest he/she will be floating on the TL all day, and that trust me is very annoying.

Boom box playlist:

Poison - Nicole Scherzinger

The Coolest – Lupe Fiasco