Saturday, July 31, 2010


Makes My Poor Head Pound


My Twitter username is ffg, because I signed up for the service pretty early on, way back when it possible to get a 3-letter username. I like to use ffg as a username everywhere, because it’s nice and short to type and because it has no phonetic pronunciation (see also: xkcd)

A long time ago, I subscribed to an RSS feed in Mail to the Twitter search feed for the string “ffg”. I now believe this to have been a mistake.

screenshot from Mail -- ffg twitter search feed

The problem is that SMS-damaged morons use “ffg” to mean “following” — this is by no means an atypical tweet:

@hdfuydsk y cum u nt ffg mw lol OH JUST FUCKING KILL ME NOW

And yeah, get off my lawn.


:: Dave Walker 10:58 (EST/EDT) [+]

:: [/misc]
:: tags:

:: Comments (3)

Comments:

ssp wrote:

Title:

Date: 7/31/2010 11:59:31

Response:
I thought that's what the preceding @ is for.
Even more oddly I frequently (almost daily) find messages containing @ssp in my @-message inbox which have nothing to do with me. No clue what that's about.
d.w. wrote:

Title:

Date: 7/31/2010 18:28:37

Response:
I started using the ffg search before the @username convention was officially designated as the way to refer to mentions, so I guess I thought it would catch some mentions that the @ thing would miss. Instead, it catches idiots, which I guess is useful at some level. I suspect your random @ssp things are something similar -- there's probably a class of morons for whom @ssp is a magic incantation. ☺
Phil Wilson wrote:

Title:

Date: 8/1/2010 06:30:39

Response:
I know my issue is different, but still: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pip/4808544379/



So, if there's no God, who changes the water? -- New Yorker cartoon of two goldfish in a bowl