I love Twitter. I really do. It’s a beautiful, wild, democratic experiment; a place for conversation to soar. It is the true spiritual successor to the Viennese coffee-houses of Wittgenstein and Freud, or the Left Bank bars in which Hemingway and Fitzgerald caroused. It is at turns hilarious and intense, as breaking news in real-time jostles with wordplay. Despite its financial woes, I’m not alone in finding it intoxicating.
But in the run-up to Halloween, Twitter is ruined; rendered practically unusable by people of the journalistic persuasion changing their names to twee, confusing, un-funnily spooky almost-puns.
This is not just because it’s insufferably twee, although it is. Nor is it simply that for these few weeks it becomes next-to impossible to work out who the blazes is saying what, though it does.
A quick scan of my timeline shows me that my colleagues Alex Hern and Sam Thielman – serious, well-respected reporters both – have become “Pumpkin Spiced Hern” (what?) and “Swam Thingman,” the latter of which puts me most in mind of late South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond more than anything else.
“You could probably argue that the part of me that enjoys seeing Twitter automatically populate an article with the byline Swam Thingman or Sam T Claus is a part that shouldn’t be encouraged (you could also argue that I could do better in the name-pun department),” Thingman said. “But I’ll quote Madeleine L’Engle in my defense: the only way to treat something deadly serious is to make a little light of it.”
Look, Swam, and Pumpkin, and Hallow’Ann and Willaaaaargh: I’m not trying to suck all of the fun out of Media Twitter. It’s lots of fun – wordsmiths addicted to the news cycle make for engrossing repartee.
Thingman also pointed out this tremendous correction in no less an organ than the New York Times on the subject of the Jillian York, who works against censorship as the director for international freedom of expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation: “An earlier version of a tweet in this column misstated the name of its writer. As her Twitter handle correctly noted, she is Jillian C. York, not Chillian J. Yikes! (That is a pseudonym she created for Halloween).”
This is certainly funny, I’ll grant you. But it’s also an example of the sort of misunderstandings that can happen in this season of confusion.
And that can easily become problematic. When something bad happens – that’s when Media Twitter is at its best (though also, sometimes, its worst). People seek information. People try to disseminate truth. Of course, Twitter doesn’t always get it right. But it’s journalism. We strive to be better.
What I can’t get out of my head is this: what if – God forbid, but what if – something big happens on Halloween? There is a mass shooting event, on average, every day in the United States. When people turn to journalists for answers, what does it look like for serious news to be coming from someone whose Twitter name is “Spooky Ghost Steve” or some equally egregious attempt at levity?
It’s just not a great optic. You wouldn’t want to see Brian Williams reporting grimly on a plane crash while wearing a sparkly conical party hat, tipped slightly askew. It looks callous. It is callous.
It’s time we admit the truth: changing your name on Twitter to a scary pun for Halloween is some basic garbage.
But, if you still want to do it, Gawker has published this handy guide.
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