by Brittany McSorley
Despite not having Twitter, I deeply love Twitter. It’s a beautiful enigma. Though it is a modern concept, it evokes for me the energy of a long-ago, simpler time when more people revered the written word. It launched in 2006, yet I treat it with the passionate nostalgia I typically reserve for J.D. Salinger’s short stories. (Hot take: The Catcher in the Rye is wildly meh compared to Salinger’s short stories. Yet everyone had to read Catcher in high school? Tomfoolery. An enormous waste. A blight on American academia. The stories are better. This is an objective fact. I won’t apologize.) Also, Nora Ephron would have absolutely killed it on Twitter. This is how I feel.
I do not use Twitter, because I am afraid of finding out I am not as clever as I suspect. I do, however, sometimes come across a tweet that is so perfect, so funny, so sparkly that I rock a classic snort-laugh. It’s the best. Here are a few such tweets.
This is funny because it’s so achingly, inescapably true. HA!
This is funny because it combines three terrifying things: guy in mask, online visibility, and LAUNDRY, AM I RIGHT? (This is why I don’t use Twitter.)
This is funny because even though I’m too old for Euphoria and too young for Ellen, I haven’t stopped thinking about this for one second since I first read it.
This is funny because it makes me feel smart. I think that’s why this is funny.
This is funny only because Gettysburg was long enough ago. I am floored by the dark precision of this choice of historical tragedy.
This is funny because dogs are perfect, the end.
This is funny because the generational divide regarding how everyone feels about phone calls is unfathomable. My mom is very good at sending me texts that say only, “Can I call you?” which immediately make me call her, trying my best to prepare for the death of a loved one as I time deep breaths with each ring, until she answers and launches into a detailed description of the most recent episode of Dateline. Which, yeah, I do want to know what happened on Dateline, but woof, Mom. Woof.
This is so funny I cried real tears. I literally cannot read it without laughing, and it never gets less funny.
See above.