ishmael n. daro

Earlier this week it was announced that the American Library of Congress would index the entire Twitter archive, every public tweet since the service’s inception in 2006. The hope is that future scholars and other curious individuals will be able to turn the clock back and see what the public reaction was to significant historical events. Of course, there could be a nuclear war tomorrow and the most popular thing on Twitter would still be Justin Bieber or #TeamBlackGirls.

A look at Favstar.fm shows that the Twitter community doesn’t really have its priorities straight. Favstar indexes the most popular tweets as gauged by how often they are starred or “favourited” by users. The most popular tweet of all time is by Justin Halpern, who tweets as @ShitMyDadSays:

“Sometimes life leaves a hundred dollar bill on your dresser, and you don’t realize until later that it’s because it fucked you.”
-September 19, 2009

The second most popular tweet ever is by Joshua Allen, who tweets as @fireland:

Been on hold so long I can’t remember who I called. I have a credit card out and my pants off but that doesn’t really narrow it down much.
-June 30, 2009

Only when we get to the third tweet is there any hint of history being created with Barack Obama‘s tweet following his 2008 presidential election win:

We just made history. All of this happened because you gave your time, talent and passion. All of this happened because of you. Thanks
-November 5, 2008

I sincerely hope that if most of our civilization gets wiped away, Twitter doesn’t survive as the only record of how we lived. People will look back and see a society with some pretty skewed priorities.