The Twatties: The Best of the Worst of Twitter in 2012

Well, 2012 is drawing to a close, which can only mean one thing: it’s year-end recap season!  If you are at all well-versed in the world of journalism (and if so why in the name of all that is holy are you reading this), you are currently being inundated with best-of and worst-of lists to summarize a year that you just lived through and remember perfectly well.  It’s all very trivial, so in keeping with that spirit, my end-of-year recap will focus on that all-consuming swamp of triviality, Twitter!

Now, there are some truly remarkable Tweeters who deserve the ultimate #FF, from Rob Delaney to Megan Amram to Ezra Klein to Ryan Kearney, but expounding on my praise of them wouldn’t be very fun or snarky, would it?  So instead, I give you the first annual Twattie Awards, honoring the most heinous, vile, or unintentionally hilarious individuals of the Twitterverse!  And the winners are:

5) @AARONCARTER: In the likely event that you stopped following the life of your first-grade crush, you are probably unaware that pop star/broken human being Aaron Carter tweets, and tweets spectacularly.  Rightfully sounding as if he never received formal education, Carter adopts a strangely beautiful stream-of-consciousness style, going through his daily activities (“Shit.. I need to plug my phone in…”), begging his fans, known as “babes,” to tweet at him (“Babes wake up!!! It’s to early for bed! Talk to me! ;)”), and offering up generous amounts of praise to himself (“The good thing about me is that if someone says something stupid and I block them, IF they apologize I forgive but never forget. ;)”), all with more “;)” and “LOL”s than the flirtiest of fourteen year-old females.  It’s all horrible, to be sure, but in his ramblings Aaron comes across as someone you hate to love, much like he always has, and for that reason he comes in at number 5 on our countdown.

4) @NancyGraceHLN: If you’re partial to sassy Southern women exploring salacious crime stories and making a hefty profit by doing so, then odds are you LOVE Nancy Grace.  Her Twitter account, however, is quite difficult to love unironically.  It appears as if Ms. Grace once attended a weekend “future of journalism” conference where youngsters gave her a profoundly influential lesson on the importance of buzzworthy social media and the power of the #hashtag, because she goes for broke on literally every one.  From “#SexedUpMommy” to “#HotForTeacher” to  “#MyLifeisALifetimeMovie” and my personal fave, “#BabyInDryer,”  Nancy is in hot pursuit of the all-powerful retweet.  I would judge her heavily for being so desperate to be talked about, but then I realized that a chunk of this article is, indeed, being devoted to discussing Nancy Grace and her Twitter persona, so I guess that future of journalism conference worked for her (and for the #BabyInDryer)!

3) @MensHumor: Repugnant, odious, and actually anger-inducing, this Twitter account features “humor tailored for men” and has amassed almost 2.5 MILLION douchebags, er, followers, with jokes so shockingly bad and low-brow that calling them “jokes” should be a tax-deductible charitable act for me.  Misogynistic (“No. Fat. Chicks.”), Alcoholic (“I solve a majority of my problems by ignoring them…or by beer…lots and lots of beer!”), and weirdly depressed (“What is the worst part about waking up? …pretty much everything until I go to bed again”), these gems regularly receive THOUSANDS of retweets, mostly by guys from your hometown who also think that parody celebrity Twitter accounts are clever, put “I like men” as their friends’ hacked Facebook status as if it’s comic gold, get their hair styled at Sport Clips, proved their heterosexuality by tweeting about the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, and still quote those fucking Hangover movies.  I have much more to say about Men’s “Humor,” but since you’re probably still laughing so violently hard at those sample tweets that reading has become physically impossible, I’ll give you a little break.

2) @realDonaldTrump: The Twitter account of this spectacularly toupee’d turd is so spectacularly turdy that it really should take the top spot here, but giving the number-one Twattie to Donald Trump would be giving an award to Donald Trump, and that would make me part of the problem, so instead he takes the silver.  This Twitter account, perhaps more than any other, is the total manifestation of its real-life author: petulant, vicious, staggeringly moronic, and comically self-satisfied.  Inappropriate attacks on the ratings, looks, intelligence, or romantic lives of such varied individuals as Brian Williams, Cher, Arianna Huffington, and Rosie O’Donnell?  CHECK.  Crusade to uncover the truth about Barack Obama’s Kenyan birth and college transcripts?  DOUBLE CHECK.  Frequent, absurdly proud moments of boastfulness, from regularly mentioning his net worth to his status as maybe the “best” tweeter on EARTH to his famous business savvy (“I never fall for scams.  I am the only person who immediately walked out of my ‘Ali G’ interview”)?  PRESENT!  I could devote an entire article to exploring the depths of @realDonaldTrump, elaborating on more of his very public nemeses or his trumpeting (no pun intended) of the ratings for The Celebrity Apprentice, but devoting an article to Donald Trump once again would make me part of the problem, and so I must resist the urge, for my benefit and yours.

1)    @ChuckGrassley: With Twitter being the absolute freakshow that it is, you may think that you have seen it all; I can assure you that you must certainly have not, though, unless you are already familiar with the Twitter persona of Iowa’s 79 year-old Republican senator, Chuck Grassley.  I don’t even know where to begin with this breathtaking man and his breathtaking Twitter feed, because I truly feel incapable of doing its schizophrenic sensibilities justice.  For starters, the man is somehow allowed to send his own tweets, with almost universally incorrect spelling and grammar, which consistently leads to the most stunning dissertations on life that I have ever seen.

How can one even say which Chuck Grassley Twitter topic is the greatest?  Could it be his running over of a deer, and subsequent crusade against deer as a species (Fred and I hit a deer on hiway 136 south of Dyersville. After I pulled fender rubbing on tire we continued to farm. Assume deer dead)?  His frequent inability to send a message that even remotely resembles a lucid thought (“#,” “If,” “Test,” to name a few of the literally millions of seemingly accidental tweets)?  His long-standing disillusionment with the History Channel and its lack of “historical” programming (“I’ve turned to history. Channel. Several times this wkend always Pawn Shop. No history. Change nAme of channel to no history”)?  I leave it to you, the reader, to judge for yourself.  What I do know, though, is that this man and his Twitter are simply extraordinary, and I am proud to award him the first annual Twattie Award for excellence in horrendous tweeting.

Congratulations to Senator Grassley and all of the other winners, and here’s to another year of basing our self-esteem/reason for existing on the number of favorites we get in 2013!

Vote now for your favorite Twitter account now in the 2012 Sherman Ave Readers’ Poll!