On Twitter, you have a little thumbnail avatar that appears next to your name in the feed. You can upload anything you want for your avatar. There’s the usual crop of crappy webcam photos, but most people get pretty creative with it.
Late last night, one of the people in my “follower/following” network (so, basically, one of my friends) was in a conversation with another, common friend of ours. My first friend (his screen name is Foulbastard) decided to appropriate the avatar of the second friend (a very nice lady in Florida named Manola) as a joke.
As I recall, a third friend (named MKLopez) then drew a gun, threatening to shoot them both. It was a very funny little riff on the classic shapeshifter scenario where two identical people are saying “No, I’m the real one, shoot him instead…” and it cracked me up.
But then the madness began.
More people started appropriating Manola’s avatar . . . soon there were hundreds of people doing it, spreading the word through their extended networks.
It was amazing. It was brilliant. It was hilarious in a you-just-had-to-be-there sort of way. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It was, as Jack would say, a beautiful thing.
After a half-hour or so, people let it drift away . . . putting their old avatar back on and making jokes about out of body experiences.
All of which is to say two things.
First, Foulbastard’s a genius.
Second, this is one of the many reasons why I love Twitter.