Oh dear. Where do I start? Last night, on a whim, I challenged the people who follow me on Twitter to make fisting a “trending topic”. It worked. It worked very, very well.
Start at the beginning, I guess.
Saturday night. I was catching up on my reading. In quick succession I came across News Biscuit‘s Countryside Alliance furious at ban on badger fisting and The Bloggess’ I kind of wrote about this on twitter already so technically this is a re-run but you probably still need a refresher, also about fisting.
Fisting?
So, at 1948 on 28 February 2009 Australian Eastern Daylight Time (that’s 0848 UTC), I tweeted: “Yeah, why not? Official challenge! Let’s turn fisting into the trending topic of the hour. Retweet please.”
Well, retweet please you did…
Seconds later three friends with high numbers of Twitter followers had retweeted it. Others followed within minutes. Then more. And more.
An otherwise boring Saturday night, Australia’s larrikin sense of humour, the peer pressure of people competing to invent ever more amusing or inappropriate ways of using “fisting” in a sentence, the delicious naughtiness of using a “bad word”… It was the perfect storm!
Mark Pesce privately wagered me $10 that it wouldn’t make trending topic. To dispel the misinformation, my challenge was issued before that bet was made. Mark is somehow implicated, but is not an instigator.
It took only 10 minutes to prove Pesce wrong.
“Fisting” became the top trending topic on Twitscoop by 1958 AEDT. Ironically, the page was displayed with a Pfizer advertisement for Viagra!
Not good enough, reckoned Pesce. It had to make the trending topics display at search.twitter.com.
Well, that took just a little longer.
Not everyone liked what was happening. One guy thought it was pathetic and told people to grow up and unfollowed everyone who participated and complained that it’s just so unnecessary to talk about aberrant sexual techniques.
Well, Sir, off you go. Pop on your peril-sensitive sunglasses. Oh, and while you’re at it, consider the hypocrisy of caring about other cultures yet calling others “aberrant”.
Wouldn’t the world be a tedious place if we only did what was “necessary”? No play. No art. No new ideas. Just a drab plod through a dull grey “decency”. Food and water in, shit and piss out, the occasional missionary-position copulation — joyless, because joy isn’t “necessary” for sperm to fertilise egg. How. Fucking. Boring.
Still, the storm rolled on. I may have lost some followers, but I gained around 70 more. I don’t really care either way, as I tweet the full range of me and my world and people are free to pay attention, or not, as they wish.
In less than an hour after it all started, “#fisting” was number 2 on the Twitter trending topics display — yes, people started using the hashtag — and by 2034 AEDT it hit the number one spot.
But it didn’t stop!
Not everyone watches Twitter every hour of the day. Even as those closest to me were cheering the victory, others were only just receiving the handed-on retweet of my initial challenge. As Europe, the UK and then the US woke up to see #fisting as the trending topic, they tweeted this fact and asked around. Some started playing the game too. The number of fisting-related tweets continued to grow.
What had I started?
Interestingly, while #fisting remained the number one trend at search.twitter.com, it suddenly and completely disappeared from Twitscoop around 2 hours after it first arrived. “Censorship!” claimed some. Was there some manual intervention? Not so, it seems.
Pierre from Twitscoop emailed me:
No manual intervention, it’s just that when our algo deems something as not buzzing any more it gets off the cloud (same thing happened with the crash in Amsterdam for instance). We have a very different approach on this vs Summize [who run search.twitter.com] but we don’t want to go into details
But what did happen is that everyone started tweeting about #fisting being the trend, which meant the phrase “trend fisting” became a trend! It was still in the Top 10 twelve hours later.
As Miktar observes, perhaps “trend fisting” should be the new term for trying to game Twitter’s trending topics.
So what can be learned from this, the very first episode of trend fisting? My first observations:
- Smut trumps “decency” every time, at least in terms of attracting attention. Like we didn’t know that already.
- There was a real change in the style of the tweets once the “game” spread beyond the core creators. More people were wondering about the trend and discussing its meaning than playing the game. That’s presumably because they discovered it from watching the trend displays rather than seeing the original meme spread.
- Once the game spread beyond Australians, and especially to Americans, the NSFW issue emerged. This important cultural difference is an essay in itself — and maybe I’ll tackle that another time — but it’s worth saying that in Australia this is more a “smutty giggle” game than a “shock-horror they’re talking about sex” thing. Besides, who wants to spend 40+ hours a week in a workplace where our essential humanity is denied?
- Some people just assumed I was responsible for all this. What does that say?
I daresay there’ll be further thoughts once you all start commenting and asking questions [hint hint].
And finally, let me leave you with this chart from Twist, which shows that at its peak, “fisting” was being mentioned in almost 0.5% of tweets globally. Scary or what?
[Credit: Cartoon Twitter-bird courtesy of Hugh MacLeod. Like all of Hugh's cartoons published online, it's free to use.]
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Tags: fisting, larrikin, news biscuit, nsfw, the bloggess, twist, twitscoop, twitter
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It was also funny to see people who were trying to make #tweetaustralia trend at same time and have their hashtag added into many of the retweets re #fisting.
Bizarre thing to have happen on quiet Saturday night!
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As I said at the time… give a man a #fisting, he’ll be sore for a day. Teach the Twitterverse about #fisting, you’ll be sore for a week laughing.
Such hilarious puerile entertainment.
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@Kate Carruthers: Also, the Twitter presence of Rare Disease Day tried to attach itself to the trend. However not only does smut trump decency, smut also trumps worthiness.
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Can’t help but see how by this example it’s possible to use the dynamic nature of crowds to move an initial concept and morph it into… Well who knows?
It reminds me of chaos theory and the dynamic relationship of the ways things evolve without ever having any idea of the outcome when it’s commenced. “Beat your wings little butterfly.”
Maybe as suggested “trend fisting” may evolve into a meme for gaming the tends, then again maybe not, it is a bit naughty. But I don’t think this story is over yet.
I wonder if the 2.0 commentators will pick up on it in the next week?
Doesn’t matter anyway, it was a lot of fun to play that game, thanks.
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When I tell my grandkids about this @stilgherrian character, and my part in the downfall of twitter:
First RT: http://twitter.com/NickHodge/statuses/1261558879
First twitter suggesting ‘fisting twitter’: http://twitter.com/NickHodge/statuses/1261660255
In the future: “{evil company x} has been rebuked for fisting {productname} into the twitterstream”
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I suspect the future will be Monday or Tuesday. Ad execs will be sipping their macciatos and dreaming up ways to fist the Twitterstream.
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It’ll be Wednesday.
The ad execs won’t have experienced the weekend’s event for themselves, because they’re either Too Important or on a cocaine comedown from Friday night. Either way, they wouldn’t actually be connecting with the world outside their own ego-bubble. Twitter is what other people do.
On Monday me and others will write about it. On Tuesday their staff will be talking about it. So around Wednesday they’ll finally hear about it themselves.
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@kcarruthers
The reactionaries against #fisting made me LOL.
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I think one thing that you haven’t covered was the size of the twitter space. Whilst I do not doubt your reach kind sir, the actual numbers of twitter users is still quite small in the overall scheme of things. Thus silly things can take a life of their own in such a small space.
However I do agree with the tone of the article and some people really do need stop being so precious. The real world has a lot of very silly people in it as well and twitter is just a reflection (if not a small one at the moment) of that world
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No responsible. In any way, shape or form. For this. Abomination. I disavow any knowledge of @stilgherrian or any of his works or any of his evil, evil arts.
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Yes, yes, Mark. Where’s my $10?
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That moment of reckoning is worthy of something special.
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Certainly was interesting to see one word take off across the twitterverse so quick.
I wonder if the same thing could be done again, or if it was just one of those “right thing at the right time” moments?
Forget who it was but someone suggested a ‘Twight Club’ — two people try to see who can get two different words trending the highest. (though that might be no contest if stephen fry was one of the contestants)
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The speed or velocity of the #fisting was the amazing part. Size or no size of the crowd playing the speed made a big difference.
I believe the term Saturday Night Live might take on a whole new meaning if the crowd gets bored next Saturday.
Of course the term it self played right into stilgherrian’s hand.
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For some reason it struck me a little like people doing the “wave” and a sporting event.
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When you search through the history of #fisting, the very first mention of it is this:
http://twitter.com/bluecardigan/statuses/1140267854
Bizarre…
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@theparissite
I thought the Romans gave us #fisting ?
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Further poking around at Twist reveals another data display confirming that “fisting” was “hot” from 7am Saturday to 3pm Sunday Sydney time (8 hours), peaking around 10pm with mentions in 0.52% of all tweets globally.
@OzAtheist: It was definitely an “of the time” thing, I reckon. A silly Saturday evening event which was successful precisely because there was no other motive than an authentic desire to be silly.
@theparissite: I’ve messaged @bluecardigan to let them know of our “success”. I’ll ask later if their comment was apropos of anything in particular.
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You forgot to mention the webciety_bot, which started bad by retweeting other people, got worse when it retweeted adb retweeting webciety_bot retweeting adb, and then started reporting on its own poor programming.
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I took part in this momentous event, just because I could, and didn’t find out the back-story until later. I’m such a sheep.
The amusing part is that my contribution spilled onto Facebook just moments before my new housemate found my profile. >_>
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This was very amusing to say the least. Just thought you should know also that I dropped what was happening into the recording that we were doing of 2 Schooners and it made the cut. @jameswilliams90 suggested making it a tag for the show but we considered the possible link and comment spam and gave it a miss.
Anyway love the idea and the fun behind it. Awesome stuff.
Something in the back of my mind however makes me think that this is gaming – which it is and the trending topic sites for twitter out there don’t take this into account and it might be interpreted negatively by people actually watching these sites for real information. Agreed that the term itself denotes some level of mischief but if alternative terms are used it may have a negative effect on those communities and sites.
Just thoughts but the Aussie in me just had to love it!
You can check out the episode of 2Schooners here: Episode 12: Rats stole my sausage!
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@James Polley: I did indeed forget to mention the silly @webceity_bot, which automatically retweets anything mentioning CeBIT or Webceity. And now we also have @f1ster, which automatically retweets any mention of fisting.
We could point them at each other, I suppose…
I also forgot to mention the US “sex expert” who said on live TV that Barack and Michelle Obama do a lot of fisting.
@Everyone else: I was going to write something meaningful about gaming the Twitter trend analysis tools, and how their simplistic “what words are being mentioned” approach blah blah blah… but the whole goddam thing has kicked off again tonight!
As I write this, Twitscoop has it at number one and the more conservatively-algorithm’d search.twitter.com has it at number three.
What have I created?
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You’re heading the right way for a smacked bottom.
Sort of Twitters version of Google bombing… tut tut.
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For the record, this image was taken while you were #fisting.
http://brightkite.com/objects/14e2cd0e058411de96e2003048c0801e -
Yes day 2.. and your monster still lives… Interesting though in Twitter it is more tweeted than Rove…
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Thank you for this post. At first after having just run the #wemedia / wemedia.com site and see us peak at No. 2, I was a bit deflated that #fisting would top it so easily, however, I now feel like No. 2 going the “worthiness” route is nothing to feel down about.
Cheers,
@chadrem
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Oh dear… http://twitter.com/f1ster
A Twitterer dedicated to all things #fisting. Clearly the type @bluecardigan warned us about.
And that photo — that’s not quite a fist, but you can see the hand looks like it wants to make a fist.
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Maybe instead of Cnut of the Week, we can vote who needs a #fisting? Cnut is a bit 2008 now.
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Mainstream broadcast TV still trumps Twitter, it seems. On Rove Live last night, Rove McManus apparently went on about Twitter, asking everyone to create an account and tweet “Watching Rove”. An estimated 1300 people did just that.
I’ll write more about this later today when I’ve done a bit more data mining. However as Gary Hayes noted:
It’s kinda sad the Twoobs sent from #rove are just shouting “watching rove!” into a void of 0 followers.
The graph shows it all, really.
While the #fisting meme kicked off, and Kate Carruthers’ counter-meme #badgers did well, The Man on TV triumphed, with tweets mentioning “rove” — either to say “watching rove” or to complain about the n00bs — peaking at 1.72% of all tweets globally.
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Watching Rove last night was really frustrating. He could at least have someone on the show who actually uses Twitter or Facebook, rather than asking what this *social networky thingy* was. His guest Lilly Allen at least uses Twitter a bit & was able to explain to him what it is but she’s only been using it for about a month, apparently. Sigh.
I can’t recall him asking people to say ‘watching rove’ on Twitter, but maybe I zoned out during that section of the programme. I don’t think he’d have enough of a concept of Twitter to be able to ask people to do that!?
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Well I thought it was fun Aunty Silkcharm.
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Yeah, no doubt this kind of twitter trend gaming will be used for marketing purposes. Great, yet another form of twitter spam.
Also, it could be argued that you are using it for self-marketing purposes yourself
I would never do that of course -
People who watched Rove Live last night tell me that Twitter was mentioned during his interview with Lily Allen, and then again during his conversation with Peter Hellyer, Myf Warhurst and other regulars “on the couch”. He didn’t issue a “call to action” asking people to join, but still stirred up enough interest to encourage what Gary Hayes now estimates as 1600 new users.
@Chad Capellman: That’s a very good result. But your real aim probably isn’t “score high on Twitter trends” but something like “create a positive impression for your work” or “build a long-lasting relationship with your audience”. Twitter trends are about fast-rising terms in the global conversation. I suspect that a slower rise in profile with a more solid foundation is of greater value.
@caronnect: Rove Live‘s role isn’t “explain Twitter to the uninitiated” but “entertain people through conversations with the stars”. Does it matter that his explanation lacked something?
@jjprojects: I’d label what I did “play” rather than “gaming”. To me, the word “gaming” implies an ulterior motive, an intent to defraud the system somehow. This was, I reckon, a genuine trend as people, of their own free will and without any subterfuge, kept using the word “fisting”.
I’d never even thought of it as marketing. Indeed, in that light it’s not much of a success. While there were a few new followers, yes, most people playing the game never encountered my name or URLs.
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Ryan & Hughesy both use Twitter, unfortunately they weren’t on the show to go into explanation to the mass audience.
I wouldn’t over analysis what was said on the show, he was probably only drawing attention to the subject, as mentioned above it’s not expected that he go into technical detail about Twitter to the rest of the nation who are not tech savvy.
And assuming he did his research, he would have known that Lily Allen had a Twitter account prior to the interview. You normally ask questions that you already know the answer to.
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Oh dear. It gets worse. Skittles, a candy-covered chocolate like M&Ms, has started a promo which includes showing people every tweet which mentions “skittles” — with predictable results. As I write this, #skittlefisting is the top trending term at Twitscoop.
Just like the “-gate” suffix has been used for every political scandal since Watergate, the “-fisting” suffix now means something like “to disrupt by via Twitter” or “to disrupt with Twitter bots”.
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As I missed ever seeing the initial tweet, finally reading this post when I couldn’t sleep explained a lot.
Stilgherrian, I salute you, and I think I possibly love you.
‘Fisting Twitter’ as a term just works so well!
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I missed the tweet, but caught the RSS and have done my duty. Can I go now?
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Ah, rheumatoid arthritis, you whore! How dare you make me miss fisting as a topic!
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@Warlach: Thank you. Meanwhile, in an exchange of pure love, I should mention that your Twitter Nudes is a great little art project. Good fortune!
@CassieST: Yes, thank you, you have fulfilled your fisting duties. Oh. That sounds wrong.
@Jenny, Bloggess: Well, you were part of the inspiration for all this, so you shouldn’t feel too bad about “missing out”. Though do you really want to link “arthritis” and “fisting” in the same sentence? It sounds like a nasty accident waiting to happen.
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Hi, if you’re interested — I asked a Doctor of Linguistics to comment about the phenomenon of #fisting and it’s my most recent post. Thanks for the inspiration!
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Could be a coincidence but:
Web comic Questionable Content just used “fisting” as part of a joke title (in reference to puppets).
The author is very active on Twitter. I submit that (I think) it is not coincidence at all.
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@Podblack: Your blog post has some excellent commentary, thank you.
@Giania: You’re not alone in pointing me to the Questionable Content cartoon. I’ve emailed the author to see if there’s a connection, but have yet to receive a reply.
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