Twitter/X began its death throes some time ago and is still thrashing about, slowly sinking into internet quicksand like Artax the horse in The NeverEnding Story (sorry to my fellow millennials for reminding you of this). It feels very small now – its reach is limited and engagement is noticeably down as more people jump submarine.
So I was taken by surprise last week when a tweet of mine got me involved in an international incident.
I’ve always wanted to say that, so I’ve taken the opportunity, but it’s a bit of a stretch.
More accurately: a bunch of annoying Americans got mad at me online.
As someone who has been on Twitter/X for [redacted] number of years, sometimes I have been lulled into a false sense of security when it comes to Americans, because many of them are cool and funny. Other lulling had also occurred because of how deathly quiet Twitter has felt in recent times, so I wasn’t expecting any kind of reaction to a post.
But it turns out I accidentally stirred up a bees’ nest, like Macaulay Culkin’s character did in My Girl (sorry to millennials for reminding you of this). My horrible crime, perpetrated against the almighty United States of America? I made a joke about Drew Barrymore having a small television.
Why is drew barrymore’s tv so small and bad. What’s going on. I’m unsettled pic.twitter.com/Fn5rHUIOge
— Bec Shaw (@Brocklesnitch) January 10, 2024
In my defence, if you watch that video, Drew Barrymore has a very small television.
It was slightly amusing to me that a multimillionaire celebrity would have a strange setup like that in general, so I thought it warranted a lighthearted tweet.
Many agreed, retweeting or engaging with the post in a funny manner in a normal-person way. Other people’s responses ranged from mildly annoying to outright aggressive.
Sometimes we forget because we are similar in many ways, but every so often you get a stark reminder of the cultural differences between Australians and Americans. A subset of the latter seem biologically unable to take the piss, or to take a joke. They also forget about the existence of other countries and sensibilities, so they can only read jokes from their pathologically earnest perspective.
There are also a lot of them who for some reason feel the need to defend the rich and powerful, possibly in some sort of delusion that they themselves one day will be rich and need defending. In this case they were defending an extremely wealthy famous woman (who crossed the picket line to produce her talkshow during the writers strike) against … a tweet … about the size of her TV. Thank you for your service.
Some people told me that it obviously wasn’t Drew’s normal house (it was, she says so in the video). People told me it’s because she’s humble, or that she doesn’t care about material items (she is a multimillionaire who owns several properties).
Someone claimed that it was because she is rich and doesn’t waste money on a nice TV (I don’t think TV purchases make or break your wealth). Someone said “HOW CAN YOU BE SO BOTHERED BY HER TV!” (I wasn’t). Someone else posted a picture of me and said, “you look like this and you’re talking about her TV?” (yes?)
My favourite was a woman who simply replied with the sentence: “She never had a childhood fuckface.” Elegant.
This has always been the burden of a popular tweet – if enough people see it, it is guaranteed you will get negative and nasty responses from dark corners of the internet, even if you tweet something as harmless as, “I like breathing air :)”
It surprised me this time because my TV tweet got about 1,000 retweets, which is not a number you’d expect to cause such a kerfuffle. But turns out, as Twitter has shrunk and a lot of the good people have left, it now apparently takes less for a tweet to find the recesses of the annoying and awful. The bizarrely emphatic response from the humourless Americans caused the kerfuffle to grow slightly and the story ended up being picked up by multiple news sites.
Lmao pic.twitter.com/i8wOuzroIL
— Bec Shaw (@Brocklesnitch) January 13, 2024
— Bec Shaw (@Brocklesnitch) January 13, 2024
Even though it showed the ol’ gal still has some (annoying) juice in her, I see this all as another nail in the coffin for the platform and a hit for cultural commentary.
News stories are picked up from social media all the time – I have done this for a job myself – but I wouldn’t have guessed that a small engagement joke tweet about Drew Barrymore’s TV could be turned into fodder. Just like I wouldn’t have guessed that the joke would cause a stir in the first place. I probably should be more careful about what I tweet during the death rattles of the platform, but unfortunately I just found it all very funny.
So send this article as a warning to all celebrities – I’m going to be keeping an eye on your TV setups. Even if you never had a childhood, fuckface.
• Rebecca Shaw is a writer based in Sydney
