Weird Twitter

Genre of internet humor

Weird Twitter is a loose genre of Internet humour dedicated to publication of humorous material on the social network X (formerly Twitter) that is disorganised and hard to explain.[1][2][3]

Related to anti-humour and created primarily by Twitter users who are not professional humourists, Weird Twitter-style jokes may be presented as disorganised thoughts, rather than in a conventional joke format or punctuated sentence structure.[4][5][6][7] The genre is based around the restriction of Twitter's 140-character message length, requiring jokes to be quite short.[8] The genre may also include repurposing of overlooked material on the internet, such as parodying posts made by spambots or deliberately amateurish images created in Paint.[9][10] The New York Times has described the genre as "inane" and intended "to subtly mock the site’s corporate and mainstream users."[11][12] Some sections of Weird Twitter may be dedicated to a certain subculture or worldview, such as Traditionalist Catholicism.[13] A notable writer on Weird Twitter is dril.

References

  1. ^ Herrman, John; Notopoulos, Katie. "Weird Twitter: The Oral History". Buzzfeed. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  2. ^ Raymer, Miles. "Weird Twitter Leaves Irony Behind on Instagram". Motherboard. Vice. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  3. ^ Dewey, Caitlin. "Who is @Darth and why is this person always in my Twitter feed?". Washington Post. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  4. ^ Douglas, Nick. ""Weird Twitter" explained". Daily Dot. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  5. ^ Knoblauch, Max. "The 21 Weirdest Twitter Accounts". Mashable. Retrieved 25 March 2016.
  6. ^ Losse, Kate. "Weird Corporate Twitter". The New Inquiry. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  7. ^ Flynn, John. "The Normal Dudes Of 'Weird Twitter'". Metro Silicon Valley. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  8. ^ Gallagher, Brenden. "A Survey of The Best and Weirdest of Weird Twitter". Complex. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  9. ^ Sun, Scott. "An Odd, Uplifting 'Alien': Meet The Man Behind A 'Weird Twitter' Star". All Tech Considered. NPR. Retrieved 25 March 2016.
  10. ^ Bromwich, Jonah. "Crowd-Funding Gets Wacky". New York Times. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  11. ^ Bridle, James. "Meet the 'alt lit' writers giving literature a boost". The Guardian. Retrieved 8 May 2016.
  12. ^ Meisenzahl, Mary (10 March 2019). "Inside the World of Weird Catholic Twitter — and the "Rad Trads" Keeping The Old Traditions Alive". MEL Magazine. Retrieved 11 March 2022.

External links

  • Katie Notopoulos' Weird Twitter list