March 27, 2009
What’s more….
What’s more, my account at twitter has been suspended. I’m at the edge of the edge.
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comments:
- Joel Bernstein: I know right?
- Rick Neece: Being nice is a dainty way to put it.
- Rick Neece: Hey Cristopher? Who cried “uncle” first, at the end of your ten-year stand-off? To quote my...
- Michael Smith: Ours is the kitchen.
- Amy Mabli: That’s what happens when you give the dogs the bed.
- Deron Bauman: Sweet Jesus.
- Michael Smith: Don’t we all.
- Pam: I have a story coming out soon in a ‘little mag’, Chicago Quarterly Review. An old friend recently...
- Pam: And I thought, somedays, that my work was meaningless…
- Pam: I remember Eggleston at the Art Institute in Chicago a couple years ago. He was elegantly dressed in a dark suit...
- Christopher Walken: Hey Clusterflockers, Realize y’all are hurting. I’ve been a really close friend of my...
- Marco: This works pretty well in mobile, more so in iOS
- Michael Smith: It was not the intent of management to imply all sissies are “namby pamby”. Management was...
- Rick Neece: I take umbrage with the term “namby pamby.” Some sissies are fierce.
- Carole Corlew: Shelia. Happy no big deal day. I would start your very own post but this phone is in semi rebellion.
Daaaaang!
I didn’t get that guy anyway. Too much words and stuff.
Free Christopher Walken! He brightens up my day with his tweets.
It’s like he’s been *erased!*
Fucking fascists!
Bad form from the Twitterhead. They must have been angling for ‘impersonation’ but there’s a very strong case to be made against it.
(ahem) I hope you plead the good plea. Your case is strong. Your people love you.
Intent is such a slippery concept.
@cwalken was my new favorite place of my day. fuck.
I had wondered if (when) they would do that. Apparently they’ve taken a rather hard line against celebrity impersonation, and what with the @cwalken origin story being revealed…
ahhh. I was wondering what happened. That’s the only update I get on my phone and my coworkers asked why I hadn’t updated them today. (They claim to hate Twitter but always ask, “what does cwalken have to say today?”)
Not till today have I regretted the decision not to go to law school (a possibility pondered — briefly — and rejected when I was creeping up on forty years).
I’d fillet those fools six ways to Sunday, and I’d do it for free.
Did he make 100,000 followers before the shutdown? It was getting close.
He was on the cusp of 90,000 followers, Rick.
I was going to call them Twats but under the circumstances I guess Twits is more appropriate!
All very silly – Get to it, Sheila. I know you like your liver raw and warm from the body.
I am in fact planning to contact various folk at Twitter and politely inquire about how exactly decisions to suspend accounts are made — who makes such decisions and what criteria they use — specifically, on what did they base their judgment that @cwalken was impersonating the actor Christopher Walken.
As much as it’s about @cwalken’s very entertaining series of tweets, it’s about championing wit and intelligence generally.
It seems to me the only things that could be thought to be impersonation are either the name (and I assume that there are others in the world called Christopher Walken) and the avatar, which I guess is a photo of him!
I also note from their conditions they can suspend an account if the number of people following is disproportionate to those being followed. Why that might be a condition is beyond me.
The pulling the plug does seem ridiculous in the extreme and surely is something that could be resolved quite easily.
Of course, it does need the will of our CWalken – perhaps he or she has had enough. I hope not.
Oh, that is interesting — that business about the ratio of followers to followed being among the possible reasons for suspending an account. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has 273,220 followers; he follows 185.
“I also note from their conditions they can suspend an account if the number of people following is disproportionate to those being followed.” Phil, that’s a condition because of spam. And it usually works in the direction of large number of followees/tiny number of followers (and the followers in turn, often have same ratios). In other words, free laptop ladies. Who I block. Every time.
I’m sure it’s a spam thing, Lucy, but, even more reason for them to look at such things on a one to one basis – it would be very clear that the Walken account does not fall into that category – that only leaves the damn avatar! I don’t recall any words that the real Walken might be offended by – shit, I thought he would have been flattered.
Srsly. I’ve always HATED twitter… ALWAYS… then i found cwalken. Being a somewhat-fan I was stoaked to find it…
NOW IM FUCKING DISAPPOINTED AND ANGRY!
WTF ELSE AM I GOING TO DO AT WORK NOW!
GOOD JOB C*CK F*GS
Phil, I’m pretty sure it’s the impersonation thing, though the dude who ran the account will be able to tell us more if he decides to pursue finding out why his account was suspended.
There is an argument to be made for the account being literally an impersonation, but not of a real person, of a caricature that we universally understand and we call ‘christopher walken’ the film character. Confronting the thing directly and subverting it within its own terms might be a fruitful way to go with this.
I also would think the real cwalken would be flattered. the writing was dead on. i loved it. thought it brilliant. and terribly disappointed in our loss. rarely is there anything literary that really grabs me (i am sure that goes for most of us) but cwalken was fucking genius! and i am pissed about it.
I do see that Maria Russo, who interviewed @cwalken, plans to follow up on the account suspension.
“I hope Mondo Media wasn’t the cause.”
No, it was probably the sudden splurge of talk about ‘ghost tweeting’, the currently huge profile of twitter in international media (just this week, front page headline on the Guardian, as the British government includes twitter in the national primary school curriculum) and the rising wave of @cwalken love.
Lucy makes a good point. (She’ll do that.) When we watch an Elvis impersonator, there is an understanding about the nature of that impersonation. (We’ll leave Andy Kaufman’s Elvis aside for now.) And such impersonations are not, so far as I know, challenged by the the Estate of Elvis Presley. Nor do public figures tend to go after performers who impersonate them on stage. (Sarah Palin has not, I believe, sued Tina Fey.)
Actually, Maria Russo’s interview with @cwalken is worth reading in connection with this.
For those who didn’t read it, here is a link to the article on ghost-tweeting that appeared on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times.
Bring @cwalken back!
Digg this.
P.S. I do a dead-on impersonation of “Sheila Ryan”.
And flocker Mary Jeys does a parody of herself that will have you in stitches.
http://www.saunalahti.fi/frog1/wavs/10yrs.wav
http://koti.mbnet.fi/badbee/wavs/nose.wav
Brian,
What, pray tell, is a “cock fig”? Some sort of regional variety? Is it excessively seedy?
Curious,
India
India, Brian meant ‘cock fog’. A confused state.
That’s as good as it’s gonna get.
This made my day suck. cwalken was the best thing on Twitter! Ashton has a lot of stroke at Twitter. Beware the Ashton…
That’s all I am sayin’…
Step out from the shadows, Mr. Walken White. Fame, of a sort, awaits.