The Wall Street Journal‘s Katherin Rosman has learned of a secret subculture of users on Twitter notable for their nonsensical yet incisive humor. What would normally be well below the journal’s radar has surfaced, it seems, thanks to the twitterers’ “insincere engagement” with corporate-friendly advertweets. The most writheworthy cringe-moment is Rosman’s quoting of a “tech entrepreneur” to speak for Twitter’s “purists finding refuge in Weird Twitter.”
As for Weird Twitter and the conflicted feelings of early adopters as Twitter’s usership grows, Mr. Prosser says, “To me it’s the eternal battle people have over hipsterdom.”
“Twitter can feel cheesy sometimes, so promotional and self-aggrandizing,” says John Manoogian III, a tech entrepreneur in San Francisco who joined Twitter in 2006, its inaugural year. “It’s experiencing Eternal September,” he says, using the Internet slang for when something becomes overcome by the masses. He says that he and other purists are finding refuge in Weird Twitter.
“It’s just regular people trying to reclaim the platform with ironic, meta-humor,” Mr. Manoogian says.
Here is some Brent, to cleanse your palate.