The Lighter Side Of Twitter

Twitter often finds itself a platform for pointless ramblings, celebrity abuse and sociopathic One Direction fans. Could the jokes on ‘Weird Twitter’ be its saving grace? The term ‘Weird Twitter’ […]


Twitter often finds itself a platform for pointless ramblings, celebrity abuse and sociopathic One Direction fans. Could the jokes on ‘Weird Twitter’ be its saving grace?

The term ‘Weird Twitter’ refers to a collection of accounts who tweet jokes. Far from your classic ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ attempts, these jokes take advantage of Twitter’s 140 character limit to tell a short story. Asterisks are used to establish scenarios, quotation marks to show dialogue. They can’t be taken too seriously, but can provide you with countless laughs.

Weird Twitter has been brought into the spotlight in recent months by such pages as ‘The Lad Bible’ (who have attempted to pass off the wit as their own). The retweets and favourites speak for themselves, many of these jokes have broad appeal.

Many of the people behind the accounts have day jobs and families. The ability to translate everyday struggles into humour is one we can all admire. They provide a breath of fresh air when compared to the enormously original ‘Girl Problems’, ‘Tbh Just No’ and ‘NO 1 BIEBER FAN’ accounts.

No topic is off limits. Operating slightly outside the realm of reality, these accounts have a free reign to tweet about historical events, political and social issues. They genuinely can make you laugh AND make you think.

Weird Twitter is almost a sub-community of its parent website. The accounts tend to retweet the best jokes of other accounts, so following just a few can brighten up your timeline enormously.

These accounts even have celebrity endorsement. Blink 182’s Mark Hoppus regularly interacts with them, Joss Whedon, Andy Richter and Gerard Way also get involved. This is probably the only positive form of celebrity influence on the whole website.

So follow a few of these accounts. You may get a few laughs out of it, you may not, it really won’t cost you anything to try.