Twitter hires abstract idiot savant illustrator
Twitter's down.
I would say 'quelle suprise' with the huffy sarcasm required of any Englishman using a French phrase, but to be fair - it is a surprise. From it's woe-filled crash-tastic beginnings, Twitter has become a pretty stable application, very rarely falling to pieces the way it did in the past. (Twitter being so unstable it actually spawned sites dedicated to reporting its failure such as http://istwitterdown.com/ )
Also propelled into stardom was the illustrator Yiying Lu's simple and seemingly ubiquitous Fail Whale, breeding t-shirts, fan clubs and much twitter tattle about the obscurity of the choice of image.
Some people debated the meaning of the Fail Whale. Hardly the Times fucking crossword, but apparently some felt there were unknown levels to the picture. (Wikipedia offers a strange reference to Beluga Whales as the canaries of the sea = canary in the coalmine? WTF?) It's a whale. He's a heavy bastard. The little birds are having a mare lifting him. Twitter's having a mare supporting the weight of traffic passing through it's site. Right you are. I'll go use Jaiku or Pownce to destroy the needy inner demons unleashed upon my soul by web 2.0.
But now, Twitter's down for database maintenence and we're offered this:
I mean, come on. What is that? So now Twitter's a caterpillar and we're all ice creams? It's not even a half-decent illustration, people. It's the work of an idiot savant (easy on the savant). And what does it tell me? That we're all complicated individuals fighting with ourselves? My soft, chilled ice cream Ying says 'Sure, Twitter. I understand. You're a caterpillar. Caterpillars will, from time to time, require necessary database maintenence - that's natural. Take your time. I love you'; but my dry, crunchy cone says 'Fuck you, Twitter. You're a badly rendered maggot. I came here to Tweet. Fuck you. Pull your shit together and make with the butterfly that is my 140 character micro-blog!"
Ahhhh - is it about waiting for the butterfly? Is that the meaning? Are we all sweet little treats melting away in the sun-drenched desert without the butterfly to shield us with its wings...?
Look! Look what this is doing to me! It's drawing me in... Not content to keep a vice-like grip on my conscious while it's up, Twitter has found a way to occupy and divert my soul while it's down!
Bastard! I've had enough, you hear me? Enou... Oh, look. Twitter's back. Laters! Gotta tweet!
Article Dan
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