On Twitter as a Rude Metaphor

“People say, You must have been the class clown. And I say, No, I wasn’t. But I sat next to the class clown, and I studied him.”
- Dr. Allan Pearl

This is why I love my Twitter: it fulfills in me a primal urge to act out in class, in little bursts. Since having moved past school and into the working world, the class clowning urge was one I’d kept dormant. As it turns out, however, blurting out ridiculous things to a roomful of people offers every bit the dopamine jolt as an adult as it did as a kid, which turns out to be very therapeutic.

In Twitter, there is a sense of ordered play. There is no judgement. You can talk to your neighbors, stand up and give a report on what you’re doing, pass notes, make fart noises if that’s your schtick (the highest form of comedy), or sit in the back, observing. But if you do a real banger mouthfart, like where your arm gets all wet and people actually think they smell something, there’s the joy of peer approval, in the form of a “favorite.”

Oh, and an added benefit of Twitter: it helps you to develop an economy of words and conciseness of ideas. Because the longest mouthfart isn’t always the funniest one.

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