British comedy is impossible to recreate for your friends. Try as you might to tell a story from the British version of the Office or Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail, it is impossible to accurately capture the pauses and awkward silences that made it so funny when you saw it. You inevitably end up saying,
“Yeah, there’s this scene where two guys are arguing about an African swallow and then the one guy keeps asking questions! That’s hilarious right? I guess you had to be there.”
That’s the kiss of death when you’re telling someone a story, “I guess you had to be there.” It’s the official sign that you have failed to turn “there” into “here” with your storytelling prowess and should instead change the subject to something else as fast you as you can.
I find it every bit as challenging to explain what Twitter is and features that are on it. But I will nonetheless attempt to.
I tweet a lot. (I’m @jonacuff) One of my favorite parts of Twitter is the column. On the right hand side of this microblogging/conversation medium there’s a list of all the topics that a lot of people are talking about. On the day of the Royal Wedding, most of trends had to do with the big event. There were trends like “They Kissed!” “Proud to be British!” or “#RoyalWedding.” If you click on the trend you can see all the different tweets that referenced that exact phrase. It’s a fun way to check into a random conversation and it reveals a snapshot of what thousands of people are talking about all at once.
Last week, out of nowhere, I saw the name “Francis Chan” trending. (He’s a pastor who wrote the book “Crazy Love
But that feeling of completely silly, completely unnecessary excitement was short lived because I started to worry. Often, if someone is trending it means one of three things has happened to them:
1. They got a DUI.
Very, very popular way to trend on Twitter.
2. They tweeted something controversial.
When the New Orleans Saints drafted a running back last week, their current running back Reggie Bush tweeted “It’s been fun New Orleans.” Guess who trended the next day? Reggie Bush.
3. They died.
I’m going to go ahead and say this is the worst possible way to become a trending topic on Twitter. The one upside is that you could probably have them carve “He trended” on your gravestone or place the little blue twitter bird or fail whale on top of your headstone.
So when I clicked on Chan’s name, I was scared I was about to see one of three issues. But, it turns out that he was speaking at a conference. He was dropping some bombs from stage and people loved them so much they started tweeting him like crazy. I ended up getting to enjoy the unexpected “hooray” of having a Christian trend on Twitter, despite knowing someone would Jesus Juke me and say, “Why are we so concerned with the trends of the world?” At which point I would say, “Trending on Twitter is being in the world, but not of the world.” I’d probably even name drop the men of Issachar and 1 Chronicles 12:32 just to up the ante.
But that’s just me. Have you ever gotten a silly amount of excitement from seeing a Christian trend on Twitter or get posted on Facebook?
