My Old-School Tweet

Today my Twitter On Paper arrived!   For those of you who don’t know about this project, a guy named Sam Potts in Brooklyn, NY, decided that he would allow people to request that he write down, on paper, any Tweet he had previously made and mail it to the requesting person, free of charge.   He has just finished the project, capped at 1,000 hand-written and mailed Tweets, and I am now possessing one of them because I requested one before he finished — this is so cool!

So, here’s the envelope as it arrived.    Note that Sam has some incredibly good handwriting:

Opening the envelope, I find two sheets of paper, one with a greeting from Sam on it, the other with my Tweet-on-Paper:

The greeting sheet reads, “Thank you for participating in Twitter on Paper.   You’re always welcome to send something* back, if you like, no obligation!    Sam Potts, Somestreet, Brooklyn, NY 11215   *of equal or lesser value, of course!”

I will definitely be sending something back to Sam, but I have to think of something really creative and good.   I want to thank him for trying something pretty novel and curious and footing the entire bill for it.

My Tweet-on-Paper:

It reads:   “Ok no kidding people — when you get your ToP, do not blog about it.   Do not spread the word in any way.  This thing is already out of hand.” and it is stamped, “Jun 8 2009“.

The rules of Twitter-on-Paper stated that requestors had to specify a tweet that Sam had made himself, because he is the only owner of his own Tweets and the only one that has the legal copyright to distribute them as he wishes.   I picked the above Tweet because it’s kinda ironic — he’s Tweeting about the very thing that I requested.    A local black hole ought to open up near here any moment…

I think I’ll go and find a suitable frame for this little piece of Internet culture — after all, who knows in 5 years where Twitter and so forth will be?

A huge thanks to Sam Potts and his curiously fun little project — I love my Twitter on Paper!

© Nathan Pralle for PhilosYphia, 2009. | Permalink | No comments....YET! Make one! | Subscribe RSS