Viral Twitter Threads
Twitter threads are a great thing and come in tons of different varieties. Some of the more popular Twitter threads are scary stories, fictional stories, or people just writing about something that happened to them. In this post, I'll be diving into two different threads, one that gained traction through being really bad, and one that was popular due to the reactions that came out of it.
The first thread I'll be talking about here is the thread about the fake Ikea story posted originally by Dan Saffer (@odannyboy). Dan is an employee of Twitter and went viral on the platform after he shared a tweet from a fake news site called thereisnews.com. The story he shared was a post from This Is News about how a man was arrested for putting fake arrow decals on the floor of an Ikea store leading to a labyrinth with no exit.
So let's talk about this fake news site for a second. This is a hoax site that posts comedy stories just for fun and laughs. The ones that are in charge of this website are part of a bigger project that they call the "Comedy Factory." The same people that run that site also run two other comedy news site in Spanish on other domains.
So, about this story that got spread around: Dan received tens of thousands of engagements on this string of tweets. After being contacted by Buzzfeed, via direct message on Twitter, Dan did put out an apology tweet. In this, he said that he apologized for spreading "fake news" to thousands of people, and also linked his obligatory SoundCloud, where he also issued an apology through a podcast.
The second thread we're looking at is about workplace sexism. This thread was about two coworkers, Martin and Nicole, that switched names in the workplace for a while to see what could be done about the sexism problems there were having in the office.
Martin R Shneider posted his accounts of using his female's coworker's name for two weeks on Twitter. Martin, at the time, was working for a small service firm and was aware of the concerns his boss was having with his coworker Nicole. His boss claimed that Nicole took much longer to fulfill project deadlines that had to due with customer communications. Martin thought since he had more experience, that was the reason for him working through things faster than Nicole, but then after taking over a project for Nicole, he realized that this customer was being particularly uncooperative.
Because of the shared inbox in their branch, Martin was accidentally signing his emails with Nicole's name. After he noticed that, he cleared up his identity with the client, and he claimed that the client's attitude turned 180.
"By the time she could get clients to accept that she knew what she was doing, I could get halfway through another client. I wasn't any better at the job than she was, I just had this invisible advantage." Said Martin.
Though Martin was using Nicole's name for his work, Nicole was using his. Martin said that the two weeks that he used another name was hell for him, while Nicole had a much better experience with her clients during that time.
This really shows that workplace sexism is or can be a real thing and that these things also should be addressed. And the response this tread gained also showed that people do really care about sexism, workplace discrepancies, and other intolerable things.
The first thread I'll be talking about here is the thread about the fake Ikea story posted originally by Dan Saffer (@odannyboy). Dan is an employee of Twitter and went viral on the platform after he shared a tweet from a fake news site called thereisnews.com. The story he shared was a post from This Is News about how a man was arrested for putting fake arrow decals on the floor of an Ikea store leading to a labyrinth with no exit.
So let's talk about this fake news site for a second. This is a hoax site that posts comedy stories just for fun and laughs. The ones that are in charge of this website are part of a bigger project that they call the "Comedy Factory." The same people that run that site also run two other comedy news site in Spanish on other domains.
So, about this story that got spread around: Dan received tens of thousands of engagements on this string of tweets. After being contacted by Buzzfeed, via direct message on Twitter, Dan did put out an apology tweet. In this, he said that he apologized for spreading "fake news" to thousands of people, and also linked his obligatory SoundCloud, where he also issued an apology through a podcast.
The second thread we're looking at is about workplace sexism. This thread was about two coworkers, Martin and Nicole, that switched names in the workplace for a while to see what could be done about the sexism problems there were having in the office.
Martin R Shneider posted his accounts of using his female's coworker's name for two weeks on Twitter. Martin, at the time, was working for a small service firm and was aware of the concerns his boss was having with his coworker Nicole. His boss claimed that Nicole took much longer to fulfill project deadlines that had to due with customer communications. Martin thought since he had more experience, that was the reason for him working through things faster than Nicole, but then after taking over a project for Nicole, he realized that this customer was being particularly uncooperative.
Because of the shared inbox in their branch, Martin was accidentally signing his emails with Nicole's name. After he noticed that, he cleared up his identity with the client, and he claimed that the client's attitude turned 180.
"By the time she could get clients to accept that she knew what she was doing, I could get halfway through another client. I wasn't any better at the job than she was, I just had this invisible advantage." Said Martin.
Though Martin was using Nicole's name for his work, Nicole was using his. Martin said that the two weeks that he used another name was hell for him, while Nicole had a much better experience with her clients during that time.
This really shows that workplace sexism is or can be a real thing and that these things also should be addressed. And the response this tread gained also showed that people do really care about sexism, workplace discrepancies, and other intolerable things.
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