Twitter Wit: Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less
By Nick Douglas
3/5
()
About this ebook
The first authorized Twitter book, Twitter Wit is a collection of the most clever one-liners posted on the massively popular social networking and micro-blogging website. Featuring a foreword by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and tweets from celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Cho, Stephen Fry, Rainn Wilson, Penn Jillette, Diablo Cody, Michael Ian Black, Paula Poundstone, Eugene Mirman, Russell Brand, Aziz Ansari, Lisa Lampanelli, and John Hodgman, this It books paperback original, edited by Nick Douglas, demonstrates that inside every moment is a joke waiting to be written.
Nick Douglas
Technology writer and humorist Nick Douglas was the founding editor of Valleywag, and has also written for Wired, Slate, and the Huffington Post. Douglas lives in New York City.
Related to Twitter Wit
Related ebooks
The Little Book of Twitter: Get Tweetwise! Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Digital Wildfires: How to Become a Social Justice Warrior Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Creator Revolution: How Today's Creative Talents Are Shaping Our Tomorrow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThere Are Tittles in This Title: The Weird World of Words Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5LOL: A Beginner’s Guide to Comedy, Telling Funny Jokes, and Conversational Humor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVisit My Site, Bitch! Unconventional SEO Tactics for 2014: Increasing Website Traffic Series, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Viral Video Manifesto: Why Everything You Know is Wrong and How to Do What Really Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Truth About Death: And Other Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twitter Power 3.0: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Laugh-till-it-hurts One Liners and Short Jokes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPromote Your Book: Over 250 Proven, Low-Cost Tips and Techniques for the Enterprising Author Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Your Ad Ignored Here: Cartoons from 15 Years of Marketing, Business, and Doodling in Meetings Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How Do You Fight a Horse-Sized Duck?: And Other Perplexing Puzzles from the Toughest Interviews in the World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTastes Like Human: The Shark Guys' Book of Bitingly Funny Lists Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWordplay: Arranged and Deranged Wit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lost Gold Rush Journals: Daniel Jenks 1849-1865 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCommon Phrases: And the Amazing Stories Behind Them Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Hugh Manitee's Book of Memes: Change the World - Write a Meme for this Book! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit and Wisdom from History's Greatest Wordsmiths Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very Nice Ways to Say Very Bad Things: An Unusual Book of Euphemisms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Savvy Ghostwriter: Secrets of an Invisible Author Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCurious Phrases Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5mental floss presents Forbidden Knowledge: A Wickedly Smart Guide to History's Naughtiest Bits Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Start You Up: Rock Star Secrets to Unleash Your Personal Brand and Set Your Career on Fire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiving Maps: An Atlas of Cities Personified Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5So to Speak: 11,000 Expressions That'll Knock Your Socks Off Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Popular Culture & Media Studies For You
Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Things You're Not Supposed to Know: Secrets, Conspiracies, Cover Ups, and Absurdities Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And The Mountains Echoed Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Element Encyclopedia of 20,000 Dreams: The Ultimate A–Z to Interpret the Secrets of Your Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fifties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dream Dictionary from A to Z [Revised edition]: The Ultimate A–Z to Interpret the Secrets of Your Dreams Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Communion: The Female Search for Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pimpology: The 48 Laws of the Game Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Thick: And Other Essays Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Propaganda and the Public Mind Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-first Century Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gamer's Bucket List: The 50 Video Games to Play Before You Die Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Psychology of Totalitarianism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Butts: A Backstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Regarding the Pain of Others Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Twitter Wit
31 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Twitter Wit - Nick Douglas
Twitter Wit
Brilliance in 140 Characters or Less
Edited by Nick Douglas
With a Foreword by Biz Stone
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Begin Reading
Acknowledgments
About the Editor
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
FOREWORD
It’s easy to assign less weight to a pun than a poem—after all, laughter lightens the load. However, the significance of humor as a delivery mechanism for important information should not be underestimated. Satirist Stephen Colbert called Twitter the answer to the question you didn’t know you had until you had the answer.
In poking fun at this new form of communication, Mr. Colbert highlighted the very essence of innovation; breakthroughs like Twitter often occur by happy accident.
In the past decade, something interesting has been happening. People have been moving their electronic communication from closed systems like e-mail to open systems like social networks. There’s more value in messages shared publicly because more opportunities arise. A kind of social alchemy takes place when a seemingly valueless message finds its way to someone for whom it strikes a chord. Lead can be turned into gold on an open communication network.
Simple, rudimentary exchanges of information between individuals in real time enables a flock of birds to move around an object in flight as if they were one organism. Speed and simplicity work together to create something of beauty. There are over a billion Internet users on this planet but there are four billion people with access to mobile texting. Twitter blends these networks with speed and simplicity and opens the combination to development. That means more opportunities for beauty—and well-timed zingers.
The first weekend we began experimenting with the concept of Twitter, I was tearing carpeting from the floor of my home in Berkeley, California. It was a hot day and my back was aching. My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a tweet by my friend and long-time collaborator Evan Williams: Sipping pinot noir in Sonoma after a massage.
The striking difference between our two activities in that moment made me laugh out loud. When I realized our experiment was making me laugh, I knew it had potential.
We’ve seen people use Twitter to help each other during disasters, to break incredible news, to raise money for charities halfway around the world, to organize protests, to fight injustice, and simply to have fun. Through it all, there has been quickness, grace, simplicity, and humor—there has been wit. No matter how sophisticated the system becomes, it will never be about algorithms and machines. Wit is a powerful reminder that Twitter is not about the triumph of technology; it’s about the triumph of humanity.
However, Oscar Wilde famously wrote, It is a curious fact that people are never so trivial as when they take themselves seriously.
As powerful as this system has the potential to be, we’d be nowhere without a good dose of funny. Humor makes life worth the effort. If everyone were serious all the time, I’m pretty sure we’d never get any work done. We’re hiring pretty aggressively at our company these days, and key factors we look for are a good sense of humor and an active Twitter account.
Some of my favorite tweets are those that make me laugh all over again each time I revisit them. My friend Philip is an incredibly brilliant person. He’s a musically and mathematically gifted serial entrepreneur with a goofy laugh and an impressive array of idiosyncrasies. He’s also very tall and quintessentially geeky. In the middle of the night he Twittered, Taking a bath. Come over if you want to learn about water displacement.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he was prepared to discuss fluid mechanics with anyone who responded.
Wit is a wonderful word to associate with something that may turn out to be a favorable mutation in the evolution of human communication. Sharp, quick, inventive, and intelligent, with a natural aptitude for words, ideas, and humor: The very definition of wit brings to mind the people with whom I share my days. The heart of Twitter is the small team of folks working out of a loft in San Francisco, but our soul is made up of everyone around the world sharing, discovering, and building on this service.
A spark of genius from my friend and cofounder Jack Dorsey has transmuted from a simple idea to something mysteriously powerful. Given a limit of 140 characters, people consistently reaffirm that creativity is a renewable resource. It’s easy to dismiss this simple new format upon first introduction, but