Like A Dying Star
There is a person on Twitter you find annoying and this is more than likely how they got that way
I’m not sure when the term “content” became ubiquitous. Back when the internet was young, there were no “Content Creators” there were just people that made things and people that commented. Youtube videos, webcomics, long Xanga posts, whatever you wanted could be brought into being if you had enough time on your hands. Back then, truly viral posts were rare. There were a handful of new viral videos every year and they were mostly unpredictable. It feels downright old fashioned to imagine something as quaint as “Star Wars Kid” or the “Numa Numa Dance” going viral today. Now, virality isn’t a special occasion , it’s the goal. Viral videos and tweets started getting people jobs so we started throwing our ideas into the content mill in hopes that money might come out. Soon the question wasn’t “When is the next viral thing coming” but rather “how many things have gone viral today?”
This has been especially true on Twitter. If you wake up after 10am PST good luck figuring out who everyone is angry at today without DMing someone. By that time, the responses to the original viral posts of the day have already gone more viral than their predecessors. With Twitter’s quick posting speed, immediate feedback, and eternally content-starved user base, you can go viral every day. And people do! But to go viral means you have to try to go viral, and watching someone try to go viral is incredibly annoying. As you read this, there’s probably someone who comes to mind. Maybe it’s a friend who absolutely should not be getting into TikTok, or some random person from high school trying to get her travel blog off the ground, or maybe it’s just an online stranger who you dislike for reasons you can’t fully articulate. Either way, we all know the type. We all know that gross feeling we get when we read something that felt like it was bred in a lab to try and get as many likes as possible. But what pushes a person there? What causes someone to get such a bad case of Brain Worms?
I’d like to attempt to break this down with two of my favorite things. Mediocre drawings and soup.
The Death Of A Poster
Stage One: Exposure
This is Brub Gorm. Brub is a regular guy with a Twitter account. One day, Brub tweets out an unremarkable but common enough belief that nobody has considered for a bit: Soup is good. The post gets in front of the right people at the right time and does numbers. It’s not the main talk of the day or anything, but Brub gets a nice little pile of followers and, most importantly, a serotonin rush he will never forget. Today, Brub Gorm feels more heard than he ever has before. Today Brub Gorm exists in a way he did not exist yesterday. All thanks to soup. But today is not enough.
Stage Two: Restaging
Like anyone chasing a high, Brub repeats his actions. The people want soup? He’ll give ‘em soup! He establishes a following for himself as a part of Soup Twitter. He’s well regarded. A friend sends him a screenshot of one of his tweets reposted on Instagram with the message “My girlfriend’s friend sent her this, she doesn’t even know you lol” and Brub briefly wonders if this is what it feels like to be a horse. He is strong and beautiful and free of pain. But as time goes on, his growth slows. He gets fewer new followers, fewer likes, fewer retweets. And that doesn’t feel good to Brub. It doesn’t feel good at all.
Stage Three: Introduction of Risk
Brub, feeling the frantic nervousness of a man who hasn’t gotten his brain juice for the day, posts a hot take dunking on bisque. Maybe instead of ordering crustacean soup just tell your friends you’re a republican you piece of shit, he thinks to himself. The tweet explodes. This is his biggest success yet. But it’s not without cost. As it turns out, Bisque Twitter is a whole thing. A massive, organized community that Brub has deeply upset. What Brub does next will define him not just as a guy who tweets but as a man. He stands at the shore of the Rubicon. He can apologize for what he’s done and return to a noble poster’s life knowing where his ceiling is, OR he can press forward in hopes of finally receiving the many benefits of being a viral twitter personality.
Stage Four: Cyclical Conflict
Brub doesn’t turn back. Brub was never going to turn back. We’re all born dying but today Brub is going to LIVE. He strikes back at Bisque Twitter, painting them as overly sensitive losers or bitter haters or bigots. It doesn’t matter what he says, what matters is that the people who are mad at him for purposefully tweeting something that would make them mad are WRONG and by liking his tweet, you are RIGHT. The response to this, naturally, is adulation. People eat it up. Brub gets enough followers that even people who think he sucks are forced to see him on their timeline every day. And the people who love him LOVE him. It’s a perfect symbiotic relationship. The folks at home get to project themselves onto a relatable, likable everyman and Brub gets to see a very big number on a screen at the cost of his humanity.
Stage Five: Here Was A Man
But like all things, eventually the shtick gets old. The people that followed Brub get exhausted by the fact that he seems locked in constant battle with some loosely defined group of people who disagree with him. Brub’s posts are now too niche for the general public to enjoy. Eventually, Brub fades from the collective consciousness. He posts long screeds and tweet threads about things no one cares about. He individually responds to each of his detractors. Eventually he doxxes one, thinking it justified, but he gets himself cancelled. As time passes, those who follow Brub only do so out of morbid curiosity. He’s a sideshow. An alligator with two heads being pushed in a cart from town to town. Come one, come all. See The Poster. Watch as one head screams while the other begs that you listen.
Somewhere in these 5 steps is each and every one of us. Me personally? I think of myself as continually bouncing between 2 and 3. Typically staying in my lane and posting the goofs that people expect to see and occasionally fighting a subconscious desire to fly face first into the sun with a take so stupid God himself would send it to his group chat. Maybe the only way out is through.
And we close on the closest thing Twitter has to a parable.
There are just too many things to comment upon in a favourable sense, so I will simply leave you with *applause*