Cate Owen

February 3, 2013February 8, 2013

Best Tweets: January 2013

As it should be during summer holidays, we spent a great deal of the past month drinking. Then we went back to work and watched cat videos. One generous tweep shared extracts from her teenage diary, and we may never look at Oprah the same way again. Here are January’s tweets of the month.

Bottoms up
@BenQuigan I’m too drunk, too many waiheke
@nikkitheknitter I’m at the stage where it feels appropriate to finish other’s abandoned glasses of wine at the table. #weddingettiquite #quitedrunk
@AshleyCnz Shingle Peak says its new 500ml bottle is “perfect for two”. I think it’s misspelled one
@DanniiGardiner So I just woke up handcuffed to myself. What happened last night #hensnight
@annemjw Signs the person you are hanging with may have had A Night? Powerade-blue tongue.
@Robbo_Junior I’m having fruit salad for lunch. It’s mostly grapes. All grapes actually. Fermented grapes. Ok, I’m having wine for lunch.

Face, meet palm
@beanbiz Read the ‘rinse just before use’ label on the blueberries. After demolishing them all. Do I drink a glass of water to now to clean them?
@TroyRF Mum: “How do we cremate a frog?” Brother: “Do we put it on a toothpick?” Decision: Burial. #FrogRF
@RachelRayner Watching cat videos. Ad: Are you single? Meet men near you! Shut up, YouTube, stop judging my choices.
@TophHooperton Something huge with a lot of legs crawled across my bed and then Kaiser Soze disappeared before I could fight it. #hyperventilating
@pinkdeedle I just dried myself with a tea towel after a shower. Must do washing.
@CyrisXD Person is typing…Person is typing…Person is typing…Person is typing…Person is typing…Person: Hi.

Like a boss
@MeghanMutrie Slow clap to Oprah’s team for figuring out how to get men to openly watch Oprah.
@CateOwen Bought a bunch of those naff stick figure car decals and have been slowly adding to the neighbour’s collections. Only God can judge me.
@hamish_keith Someone knocked on the door and asked what did I think the “personal name of Gd was?” I suggested Fred and they went off in a huff
@EstherStephens_ Dear neighbours. If your shit music is loud enough for me to shazam and establish what bullshit you are listening to, IT’S TOO DAMN LOUD.
@kittenypentland Tomorrow I am going to go up to a bald man and ask him if his carpet matches his drapes. I suggest you do the same.

Kiwi as
@cathmarygeorge Sat next to some Americans at lunch who were quite disappointed that the kiwi burger at McDs here didn’t have actual kiwi in it
@JennySuo My mother on the NZ Police force: “They don’t even get to use guns! They run around with those tweezers instead!”
@kirsty_johnston You know, when the early settlers nicknamed Russell “the hell-hole of the Pacific” they’d obviously never envisaged Waitakere District Court

The diary of a teenaged tweep
@BoganetteNZ happened upon a diary from her teen years. We spent the evening glued to Twitter while she quoted gems from her journal and added comments from her older, wiser self.

“Mum told me to fuck off 2day. She is such a fucked whore of satan slut bitch cunt. I’m going to kill her, steal her pills and sell them”
Oh Jesus. “MY FUNERAL: play Dolphins Cry, bury me with my Marlborough lights, party at K Bar afterwards, red coffin please” LIVE? LIVE?
“I love Jax so much I can’t even breathe my lungs are made of water. Fuck my mum is a whore. I hope she dies.” Who the fuck is Jax?
“I am actually having the best week. Other than my mum being a fucking whore. I want to stab her every day”
“We are going to the beach today!! I got a new bikini I look ok. Better than that fucking whore Gemma. Also I got a kitten! So cute”
“I am so in love with David” Let me guess…David gets a hand job? I’m like Oprah. You get a handjob! And you get a handjob!

This month’s winner of some delicious cider is @BenQuigan. Thanks, Old Mout! Make sure to follow them: @OldMoutCider.

And thanks to Cate for putting her baby in my care this month. What a fun way to start the year!

Cate’s note: I hope you’ve all enjoyed Vicky’s sweet tweet choices, and thanks again for all your nominations – I couldn’t do this without all of you! I have enough guest editors to see us through to August, so I’ll put another call out in the middle of the year. If you’d like to be a guest ed, keep your eyes peeled for that.

January 23, 2013January 23, 2013

Facebook’s Open Graph Search: A user’s first time

Today I got my Facebook account upgraded to include the new Open Graph Search – a function that allows you to use information which you and your friends have uploaded to Facebook, as well as info supplied by Bing, to find what you’re looking for.

This is what the start screen looks like:

The search starts refining as soon as you start typing.

And when you’re already on a page, it defaults to this view, basically allowing you to search the page, and dig a little deeper.

You can also put qualifiers directly into search – I asked Facebook to tell me TV shows my friends like, and this is the results display.

Clicking on that “other TV shows” link starts you down the rabbit warren.

Open Graph Search also groups activities such as location checkins, as demonstrated below.

This shows me where my friend Jesse has been lately. I can filter it down from here.

You can search groups of friends, too. Below is an example Facebook provided during its guided tour – here are some of my friends who went to the same university as me. I can then drill these down with filters.

Another nice function is the display of photos you’ve liked. Previously these would disappear into the ether, but Facebook now displays them for you. Not sure why I liked that Justin Timberlake photo. Don’t judge me.

Much ado has been made of the potential dating aspect to the new search. I started by looking for single friends of friends. Here are the options Facebook gave me:

And those can be drilled down to:

So if you wanted to see friends of friends, who worked where you do, in the same city, and single… you can.

In a nutshell, if you want to keep using search in the simple way you always have, you can. And if you want to get into some serious stalking, you can. I don’t doubt it’ll be confusing for some people, and we’re yet to work out any of the algorithm (How much do likes, or does Bing come into it, I wonder), but I think this could be very, very interesting.

It’s easy to use, and fast, too. I did notice, however, that a few pages that previously appeared first for me were appearing last, or not at all.

I think a lot of people will be shocked by the sheer volume of information Facebook has on it – but remember, it’s all stuff you’ve given it. I’m yet to work out whether Facebook uses implicit data to draw conclusions about things like hometown and marital status, but either way… Where to adjust your privacy settings.

January 10, 2013January 10, 2013

Celebrities read mean tweets about themselves

Twitter: Giving people a licence to be rude to strangers since 2006.

People often say “you shouldn’t be in the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat”, but hearing celebs read out the insults they get tweeted in the below videos highlight just how mental people can be.

And also how the celebrities are actually just human beings, with feelings and senses of humour. Mostly.

December 30, 2012

NZ in 2012: As told via Twitter

2012. It was a strange year. A year we, as a nation, ran out of Marmite. A year we watched people in lycra chuck stuff and run fast for shiny necklaces. A year where ANZ finally put the NBNZ horse to sleep. A year we rocked the classiness harder than ever before.

There was Valentines Day
ErinNoName I was just given a bottle of codeine and a box of tramadol. That’s a valentines day gift, right?

A road rule changed
robtreacher Starting Sunday, Kiwi motorists will be giving the finger to other turning traffic with the left hand and not the right.

Kim Dotcom happened
KimDotcom You heard of this guy who was nailed to a cross, came back from the dead & launched a cool movement? Mega is kinda like that 😉

We watched the Olympics together
rhysiedarby BBC commentary: “The NZ rowers are a little rough around the edges.” – yeah that’s how we like it. We’ll wait for you at the finish bro.
katie_skatie Oh, & Olympics Gods… thanks for making weightlifting terminology so fun. “In her snatch” is the best! Followed closely by the clean jerk!
TophHooperton THROW THE BALLS YOU BEAUTIFUL MASSIVE LADIES
snappy_nz New Zealand now top the medals per exploding barbecues at fan bases table.

#marmageddon hit!
evilkud As long as Hamilton exists their will never really be a lack of yeasty spreads in NZ

There was another Batman movie
Nightwyrm It’s okay that I’m not wearing pants while repeatedly watching the new Dark Knight Rise trailer, right? No-one on this train seems to mind.

Aaaand there was a Hobbit movie
kebabette The only way I could be more bored by The Hobbit is if it starred Kim Dotcom, Dan Carter, and a big jar of marmite.

The Shopping Channel launched
damianchristie The shopping channel reminds me of a game where you give someone a bunch of P then get them to talk about some crap they found in a drawer.

The Target guy fapped
VinLew Clean a stain, make a stain, clean a stain, make a stain
_victoriajayne_ Is he watching videos of girls staining carpets?
hello_im_megan After all is said and done, I was impressed by a man multi-tasking

We said goodbye to The National Bank
cjlambert quick other banks! *cue rolling thunder switch campaigns #blackhorsedown

Movember!
TwitOnTourNZ Planning My Movember Gala outfit… Question, How long does it take to grow eyebrows back?

Christmas happened, again.
And I did a whole post about it.

Bonus: The best of Stay Classy tweets
lmfbs Is a DIY brazilian a terrible idea, or simply a bad idea?
jessepeach Taught my parents to use Skype tonight. Then my dad tried to squeeze a pimple on my mother’s face. I really don’t think they get it.
pinkdeedle Accidentally pashed a dog. Long story. Bull mastiff.
JaneYee Superman may be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I can catch baby vomit with my bare hands.
JaredNeilsen Glade has ruined walking in parks! The smell of fresh cut flowers now reminds me of restrooms
mikokiko Hey snobby lady. Ohakune called. They want their carrot back.

Thanks for another year of awesome, Kiwis of Twitter.

Read more:

December 29, 2012December 29, 2012

FAQs about Tweets of the Month

Here are answers to some of the frequently asked questions I get about Tweets of the Month.

How do you pick who appears in TOTM?
Thoughout the month, I keep an eye out for tweets that are either really funny, or really poignant. People also nominate tweets they enjoy. I make sure they meet the criteria, cull it for size, and then publish. Sometimes I’ll ask guest editors to do it on my behalf.

What is the criteria for TOTM?
You need to be in NZ, or be a Kiwi abroad. Sometimes I’ll include infamous tweets about New Zealand. The other important note is that the tweet has to make sense outside of context – i.e. it doesn’t work to read an in-joke out of context a few weeks later.

The tweet also has to be ‘alive’ at the time of publish – if the author deletes the tweet, I won’t publish it.

How can I nominate someone?
The best way is to tweet me a link to the tweet you want to nominate. I prefer to not have the nominee cced in just in case the tweet doesn’t meet the criteria or make the cut. Failing that, you can send me the tweet. Thank you all so much for your nominations – even if I don’t use them all, I appreciate them all.

Can someone with a private account be nominated?
Yes. I’ll ask their permission before I publish the tweet.

Can I get a tweet removed from the list?
Yes. Just send me a message.

Do you only pick your friends?
People nominated include a mix of people I know, and people I don’t. I don’t care if I know the person or not, I don’t care if they’ve been in every single TOTM before. In a nutshell, if the tweet makes me laugh or think, and it meets the other criteria, it’ll probably be in there. I’ve followed some amazing new people thanks to other people’s nominations.

How long have you been doing this for?
Since 2009. You can read my first TOTM on the blog it started on.

How do you get the prizes?
Companies sometimes approach me, asking to partner on TOTM. I figured it would be nice to give a treat to someone, so that’s why y’all get some goodies. They have no say on the editorial content of TOTM.

Any more qs just hit me up in the comments.

December 26, 2012December 26, 2012

Best Kiwi Tweets of Christmas 2012

Happy holidays, everyone!

The People of Twitter didn’t let the silly season get to them. Much.

There were gifts
robtreacher I now have incredibly sexy underwear. All I need now is a wax job and 6 months in the gym…
Sportzfreak Those 1000 things to do / see / hear / visit / cook etc before you die books make great gifts. But not for the elderly

We watched some TV
AnnaGConnell Mum and are watching ‘Kendra On Top’. Mum seems to know a lot about her.
TophHooperton ‘To my brother, the richest guy in town’. You may now commence sobbing like a middle aged divorcee. #ItsAWonderfulLife
rarahsobson I am so emotionally invested in this one direction tv documentary.

We ate some food. Mostly Trifle.
joesomething_ Trifle for all meals.
MoataTamaira Trifle breakfast, round 1 underway.
AnnaCoddington At Christmas time your second helping of pudding better be AT LEAST as big as your first was.
dane_0k I’d like to throw a baby shower for my food baby

We drank a little
allstarangel In hindsight six shots of sambuca in six minutes was not the brightest idea I’ve ever had.
_HannahTweets_ I am clearly the drunkest of my family right now because I just sang happy birthday to baby Jesus as “grace” before we ate.
Rageaholic_ I’m about to put the code thing on my phone ….#crhishmis
Stitchpunk …,,a bit sozzled, just quietly..which not stop me having more when we get home….
unstatusfactory Christmas made me drunk.
VickyRF Eggnog is made! Everything from this point on may be a blur.

We had interactions with whanau
toryhipster Cousin’s boyfriend calls himself the Timinator. Fuck. Send help.
Rose_Matafeo “So, have you seen any good film recently” – actual conversation I tried to make with my 3 yr old nephew
hakiclark You’d be proud of me. Uncle asked how I was, told him. “I’m all for counselling” he says. “Tell me how it goes”. So that was unexpected.
Tenani I feel like at Christmas everyone tweets about how weird their family is & in doing so realises since every family is weird none of them are
mattdeevee 1.5 hour Skype session with the family in NZ… 4 generations sharing Christmas at the same time on opposite ends of the world. Priceless!!!
kathadu Wearing a top that is entirely inappropriate for Christmas with the ex. Oh well. It fits and it’s comfy. Merry Cleavage everyone

It was hot
karenhurley 830pm and haven’t started cooking Xmas dinner yet. Too damn hot. Poor kids been surviving on carrots & corn chips.

Some weird stuff went down
I_Am_Artemis My chicken has the right idea, she is fast asleep in the tree.
ashleigh_young Just passed a bunch of people having their Christmas lunch in the middle of a roundabout. Picnic table and umbrella and everything.

And there were some adorkable grinches
MattTaylor HAPPY HALLOWEEN
guywilliamsguy So many people have wished me a “Merry Christmas” this year, I’m feeling a lot of pressure to live up to such high expectations!
terror_nz Goddamn I hate Christmas. Which Santa was never born.
blendy All the boxing day sales emails coming at once are making it easy to unsubscribe from all the annoying mailing lists I’m on.

Enjoy the rest of your holidays, New Zealand. And for the first time ever, I’ll let Brad have the last word!

Kiwi_Chatter Ngā mihi nui mō te Kirihimete.

December 16, 2012December 16, 2012

When good internet warriors go bad

By now you will have heard the terrible news about the shooting at the Connecticut primary school.

Not everyone online treated it with the respect the situation deserved. Among those were a handful of Justin Bieber fans, who took to Twitter to express their angst that extended shooting coverage meant that the Biebs would probably not be on the Ellen show that day as planned.

Yeah. Pretty thoughtless, eh?

The People of the Internet tend to be pretty good at sorting this level of herpderpery out – tweets came thick and fast, telling the offenders what was going on, how bad it really was, and giving them a little perspective.

However, it wasn’t long before this started to happen [NSFW]:

It’s actually part of a wider trend I’ve been noticing lately: Someone is a bit of a dick online, or just says something someone else doesn’t like, and as part of the ‘community service’ of correcting that person, a line is crossed.

In my opinion, in this kind of situation it’s never okay to tell someone you wish they’d get shot, or that they should kill themselves.

I’m reminded of the recent Charlotte Dawson situ – regardless if you felt she was being a jerk or not, there’s no place for telling someone to “neck yourself”. Some of the recent tweets at The Oatmeal after his pathetic rape joke aren’t winning anyone over to the good side. The Pike River memorial Facebook page I help the Grey District Council manage has receiving end of some of the most disgusting stuff you can imagine, from trolls who see a page like that as “grief porn”. A fair number of those trolls genuinely believe they’re correcting a wrong. Some are just dicks.

In the last two days, I’ve seen people tweet to another user that they should drink bleach, get shot in the face, be mutilated to death, and be beaten to a pulp. Just mocking someone can be bad enough without adding threats and inciting to suicide.

I’m not the moral police, I know that. I’m not saying telling people off online is wrong. I’m not even saying that I think swearing at people is wrong. The shooting, in particular, was a highly emotionally-charged situation, and it’s only human to get ragey, upset, frustrated, scared, annoyed. But as humans, I believe we’re called to something bigger than expressing every unfiltered emotion we ever have at a 13-year-old who is being a bit selfish or thoughtless.

Not everyone treats terrible situations with the respect and care they deserve, we can’t control that. But what we can control is how we act towards those people.

Lets not be a part of making a horrible situation worse.

December 8, 2012December 8, 2012

Top 10 viral hits of 2012

Who doesn’t love a good viral hit – at least for the first week? I’ve collated some of the biggest into this list, in no particular order.

Ridiculously Photogenic Guy
On a sunny March day in South Carolina, Zeddie Little was participating in the Cooper River Bridge run when his picture was snapped by Will King. Will put Zeddie’s photo onto Flickr, and then Reddit where it received more than 40,000 upvotes.

The photo quickly became meme fodder

And Zeddie ran his way into hearts across the world.

Ecce Homo – aka Potato Jesus
Now to the polar opposite of Ridiculously Photogenic Guy: A century-old painting of Jesus was restored by an elderly woman, but comes out of it looking like a potato.

Yeah. It was only a matter of time before this happened:

Grumpy cat
What would a top 10 viral list be without an entry about a cat? This one is a cat named Tardar Sauce, who is the unhappiest looking cat you’ll ever see.

Instant viral hit.

Bonus: Here is a video of grumpy cat being patted:

Overly Attached Girlfriend
Meet Laina. She likes you. She really, really likes you.

It all started with this video, which includes the lyrics “If I was your girlfriend, I’d never let you leave without a small recording device taped under your sleeve.“

Which quickly spawned a huge Overly Attached Girlfriend meme!

This grew into Misunderstood Girlfriend

Laina’s now done deals with large companies to capitalise on her new-found viral fame. Here’s something she did with Samsung…

You can follow her on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/laina622

Dog shaming

2012 was the year we called our dogs out for their terrible behaviour. Dogshaming started as a tumblr in August with this photo:

And grew…

And grew!

Kony 2012
The Invisible Children wanted to create a project to focus the world’s attention on capturing African rebel leader Joseph Kony. And boy, did they do that and then some.

If you haven’t seen the video they made, click here.

It’s unusual that a half-hour video would viral, but that it did – nearly 7 million views in 16 days on Vimeo, and 43 million views in 72 hours on YouTube.

Almost immediately, a bunch of celebrities came out in support of the project, #StopKONY became a global trending topic on Twitter, and a critical Tumblr was launched to point out some of the issues with the video and Invisible Children. Debate raged over Kony, what governments should do, and the nature of the Invisible Children organisation

In March, one of Invisible Children’s co-founders was taken into police custody after he started running around San Diego naked, drunk, masturbating and screaming. The incident quickly spawned its own meme.

Kony is still at large.

Gangnam Style
The number one most-watched clip on YouTube, causing Beliebers everywhere major heartbreak, is now Gangnam Style, by K-Pop act, Psy.

At the time of writing, the video has 884 million views, and has spawned a “horse riding dance”.

It’s this generation’s Macarena.

Somebody I Used to Know
Featuring our own Kimbra, Goye’s Somebody That I Used to Know rocketed up the charts.

It spawned this amazing version, featuring five people playing the one guitar

…Got historical

…And even the Queen got amongst it

Call Me Maybe
I just met you, and this is crazy. Here’s the video, watch it, maybe?

Carly Rae Jepsen’s hit was technically released in 2011, but didn’t become a viral hit until Justin Bieber, Selena Gomex and Ashley Tisdale released their lip dub tribute in February.

Someone cut a Barack Obama version

As well as the memes and videos, the song even inspired a range of business cards.

The Tug Doctor
This one goes out to TV show Target’s carpet cleaner, who spent more time making a mess than cleaning it.

Naturally, the episode set Twitter on fire:

“Let’s not be too judgemental until we see what sort of job he’s done on the carpets” cautioned Mike McRoberts
“Newton’s Third Law Carpet Cleaning Service. Take a stain, leave a stain.” quipped Ana Coffey
“When are we going to find out what score this guy gets out of 10?” enquired @yvettevy
“He vacuumed for twice as long as he masturbated. Good effort.” tweeted Chris Brain
“Target can I get [that] dudes number? Three times AND he cleaned the carpet? More stamina than most guys I know!” asked Jen Zindel

And the clip prompted this golden video reaction

So those are some of the biggest viral hits of 2012 – here’s to 2013!

December 5, 2012December 5, 2012

The worst Facebook updates of 2012

So many people and brands are now gaming for Facebook “engagement” that it’s ruining the platform for a lot of people.

Luckily, not too many of my friends fall for this stuff, but plenty of people have friends who do, so here’s a selection of the more desperate attempts to raise page awareness.

Lets start with this one.

No, I’m going to let my mum die. She knows it, too.

Because spamming your mates with crap always makes you lots of money, right? And cos magic.

Well played.

I liked this four times. It was heaps of fun. Changed my life.

The old “vote with a like or a comment” spam. Also if you don’t vote you obviously hate your country and won’t get any pavlova, which totally puts a dampener on my plans to finish an entire one by myself on Christmas day.

Not pictured: The “one like=one dollar donated” spam, and the “leave your password in the comments to see what happens!” spam.

DON’T FALL FOR THIS CRAP.

December 4, 2012December 4, 2012

The best pop mashups of 2012… So far

One of my favourite things about hitting the end of any year is the year-in-review style music mashups.

They’re coming a little early this year, and while we’re still waiting on DJ Earworm’s anticipated United State of Pop 2012 round up, these are still good offerings.

Daniel Kim’s Pop Danthology 2012

Robin Skouteris’ PopLove 2012

Bobby Fisher’s Pop Life