140 Characters of Ego: November Edition

Last month we witnessed pretentious poetry, accidental double entendres, and far too many self-serious musicians. But that was before Occupy Wall Street took off.  Now we’ve got plenty of rich d-bags weighing in about it and…completely missing the point!  What a shock!

@Reply: Oh, you mean the Douche Canoe Special?

Character Overage: Here we have the first species of Not Getting It, namely the one who thinks it’s about those uppity proles and their inability to consume.  Not, say, the fact that they have $50,000 in student loans and can’t get a job.

 

@ Reply: Maybe then you can afford some humility.

Character Overage: Species number two of Not Getting It: the trendhopper who thinks he’s being rebellious.  Longtime fans will recognize Ruvvy here: he was featured in the very first of these columns.  Unsurprisingly, he’s too focused on his navel to get precisely what they mean by “99%” and “1%”.  “It means being rich, right?  DERP!”

@ Reply: Oh, is that how Zynga made its money?  I thought it was “by doing every horrible thing in the book.”

Character Overage: And here we have the final species, The Guy Who Thinks He Qualifies As 1% Because He Makes Six Figures and Thinks All The Poors Are Lazy.  Andy boy, if you’re reading, these people would like to have a short word with you about the definition of the word “clueless”.

Anyway, now that we’ve classified some of the more exotic tweet trolls, let’s take a look at a few more common varieties…

@ Reply: Does it qualify as a fan letter if it’s a creepy guy wishing you were his wife, instead of her having some job?

Character Overage: Kyran Pittman is that most dreaded of species, the mommy blogger.  Seriously, her book is about how she became a housewife.  Somewhere, Gloria Steinem is drinking scotch and wondering what went wrong.

@ Reply: You’d think the guy on Project Runway would have the Twitter handle “Wide Stance”.

Character Overage: Marcus apparently likes Soul Train dance lines and pie, but he’s also smart enough to keep his job off his Twitter, so good for him.

@ Reply: AHAHAHAHAHAHA.  Wait, hold on, AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…

Character Overage: Seriously, this is like a Juggalo proudly posting about how the FBI thinks they’re part of a gang.

@ Reply: Well, you could do “I Made My Excuses and Left” or maybe “Tempted By The Fruit Of Another”, but that’d be a bit tacky.

Character Overage: To be fair, that is a hard job, but we’re forced to make fun of anybody who tweets this, because, come on, if you didn’t realize you were setting yourself up for a whole string of bad jokes.  Like “The Final Countdown”.

@ Reply: A strip club?  I mean, let’s just cut out the middleman and get to the objectification.

Character Overage: Is it wrong that I read “cancer survivor” in her profile and felt bad for making fun of her, and then read the rest of her profile and stopped feeling bad?

@ Reply: Let me guess.  You stiffed him on the tip.

Character Overage: We first mocked Molly a few columns back, but now her profile has changed.  To “ketchup” repeatedly.  So maybe this total lack of empathy for another person’s suffering is because of self-diagnosed Asperger’s instead of straight-up trollishness…

@ Reply: “Please.  Please tell me I’m fascinating.  I’m begging here.”

Character Overage: Honestly, we’re guessing a lot of people added you either because of the Doctor Who stuff in your blog, or possibly because you look a bit like Darlene from “Roseanne”.  Either or.

 

@ Reply: Oh, you work for the Sun-Times, nobody’s going to notice anyway.

Character Overage: It’s really impossible to insult this guy: before he was a tech columnist for the Sun-Times, he regularly wrote to Roger Ebert for Ebert’s various columns, and at one point Ebert described his deeply nerdy house and then asked if he was being presumptuous by assuming there was no Mrs. Ihnatko.  We can’t top that.

@ Reply: Oh, yeah, all those will only rise in value.

Character Overage: Really though, should we be surprised this guy calls himself “The Fresh Prince of London?”

@ Reply: Yeah, mental illness makes my life a lot more interesting too.

Character Overage: I’m torn, because if it weren’t for people this incredibly self-involved, a lot more good and decent things would be achieved in the world, or at least there’d be fewer douchebags.  But if that were actually the case, I’d also be out of a job.

@ Reply: Yeah, we’re sure that was a real problem for you.

Character Overage: It takes real balls to feature on your main website “Creativity” as a tab and in your bio mention you’re best known for “Stuff Christians Like”.  We’re pretty sure the Bible has a word or two to say on the topic of pride and also stealing.

 

And that’s it for this month!  Tune in next month for even more ego.

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