What's Diddy up to?

When crunch time is over in three weeks' time, I will be posting more often. I have visions of a summer spent in my dark basement, huddled over my computer, hands working feverishly, just as the unibomber huddled over his bombs (topical!). As I wrote in an earlier post, though, I compulsively "make" time to check some of my favourite comedians' Twitter updates. I think Twitter might be the best thing to happen to internet comedy since that Spaghetti Cat video on youtube. I have many comedians as Facebook friends, and their status updates are often funny, or at least generally more entertaining than most updates ("Meagan hates Mondays :("), but there's so much more room on facebook for them to spread their wings - they can post videos and pictures, they can create events out of shows and product releases, they can get annoyed by being tagged over and over again in those awful and weird Mr. Men/Southpark characters/etc. pictures. But Twitter has one focus, and one focus only: post what you're doing, thinking, etc., in 140 characters or less. Ultimately, most comedians on there probably see it, at least in part, as a promotional tool - the more followers you have, the more random people and industry people alike will see your face as they navigate Twitterverse. Virtual-fandom is becoming more and more legitimate and coveted by all entertainers. However, by the same token, the standards for virtual entertainment are rising, even when the entertainers in question only have 140 characters to work with. Making people laugh with so few characters is a challenge, requiring sharp wit and quick thinking. The twitterverse moves at the speed of light, or at least the speed of chubby little fingers and beady eyes trained by video games and MTV (or so I'm told) to get in, scoff, and get out. A lot of comedians are delivering, posting frequent, funny updates. Some are more frequent than funny, some more funny than frequent, but the point remains that it's free, real-time entertainment. Not to mention the fact that followers can communicate with their followees (or, I suppose, leaders, though that adds a strange power dynamic to the non-relationship), and if that 140-character comment is interesting enough, one is likely (well, semi-likely...trust me) to get a response. Almost as good as live.

Here are some of my favourite Twitter-ers, some intentionally funny, some not (Diddy). For a more comprehensive list of who I think is worth following, see here. Because I know my opinion means a lot. A lot.

Steve Agee
Eric Wareheim
Doug Lussenhop
Margaret Cho
Diddy
Sara Benincasa
Morgan Murphy
Jason Woliner
Tom Scharpling
Watch With Comics
Michael Ian Black
Rainn Wilson
Doug Benson
Dave Hill
Paul F. Tompkins
Jimmy Fallon
Aziz Ansari
Paul Scheer
AD Miles
Rob Cordrry
Tim Heidecker
John Hodgman
Rob Huebel
Todd Barry
Michael Showalter

A note about Watch With Comics: a bunch of comedians live-twittered the Oscars in connection with WWC, and it was extremely enjoyable to watch. Most of the jokes were very funny, and it was inspirational to watch the rapid-fire creativity. They'll be live-twittering other events, so keep an eye out.