You know the old joke made famous in an episode of “sex in the city” about the true way to read a fortune cookie by adding 2 words to the end. I'm thinking that's funny now for a couple reasons.
- fortune cookies are as American as apple pie. Invented in San Francisco they are largely unheard of in Taiwan and China, so fortune cookie jokes fall flat. When the IMF – some international banking thing – admitted China, US senators who supported it celebrated with a Fortune cookie photo-op. The Chinese thought it an odd American cultural thing and smiled. The Americans thought they honored a Chinese cultural tradition and grinned. Misconceptions were maintained bilaterally.
- Twitter forces me to use only 140 characters – including spaces and punctuations. Messages get reduced to what you could fit in a Fortune Cookie.
- You gotta add “with a 2 yr old” to a tweet from me – then it's funnier and more accurate.
If I were more clever I could reduce this to something more witty and pithy.
I'm liking Twitter at the moment. It works well for my needs traveling. I can keep multiple people updated, I can pull myself away from the more time-consuming blog, and access has been easier than email.
Soon I'm going to try tweeting a haiku.
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