Ranting Twitter Style: Not Your Parents' Rant

Did Your Parents Rant?
I come from a long line of ranters on both sides of my family. My father was a prodigious ranter, particularly when it came to listening to the evening news. He gave more than running commentary. It was loud. But for some reason it was getting behind the wheel of a moving vehicle that really seemed to stir his blood and lead to a fair bit of excitement and a long string of expletives.

He and my mother were both in the habit of invoking Jesus H. Christ. I never did figure out what the "H" stood for, but mid-rant was never a safe time to ask. (Does anyone know what the "H" stands for?)

Unlike my father, who ranted to blow off steam, my mother was a strategic ranter. She ranted to galvanize us into action. Her rants were a little heavy on the raving with a dollop of guilt for good measure.

In spite of this, I still find rants entertaining, as long as they are short. Twitter is a great place for rants because (1) there is no volume and (2) the 140-character limit precludes any raving, so people have to get straight to the heart of the matter.

Recently, I came across fellow twitterite DailyRant who has started the Twitter Rant Hall of Fame, or a collection of his favourite rants from Twitter. I had the chance to ask DailyRant how he would define this "art form," and he had this to say,
A rant is a loud declamatory monologue that doesn't present a well-researched or calm argument, usually expressed w/ strong emotion.
Here are two examples of DailyRant's work in action:

dailyrant Every time someone sneezes it is not necessary to mention the swine flu!! You all are hypochondriacs!!
dailyrant Listen up old people if you are blind *zoom* in on your text! Your large fonts are annoying and ALL CAPS is like yelling.


Here are a few from his collection:

On poor grammar, punctuation and word choice:
schellack I don't believe that "irregardless" is even a word, and it certainly shouldn't be used when you mean "regardless".
dzesika Sheesh, people, apostrophes are not a protected resource. Use them (but use them correctly, please).
Fruvous Stop saying "literally" when you don't mean it! If you say "I literally died from embarassment" then you better be talking via seance.

On the opposite sex:
hear_raven_rant  I am curently feeling femanism. Women aren't put here to cure the laziness of men. Cook your own food damn it!

On a crappy day:
jpramey I just sent a test email to myself, and Outlook flagged it as spam. I hereby resign from the internet.

On better movie ratings:
aussiehost Movies that are musicals should come with warning labels.

On indecision in large groups:
danheinz why does deciding lunch between multiple parties always have to be some complex algorithm? it's f'n lunch

On cheap employers:
mattoas  I survive the entire drive to work only to nearly die in the parking lot because my office can't hire a half decent plow.

On exasperating prospective employees:
celsbels Hey Intern Hopefuls, a 10page resume with achievements dating back to pre-school days does not impress me at all.

On journalists:
dreamnotoftoday Note to journalists writing about Twitter - we fucking know its 140 characters already

On poor table manners:
RoyaltyGT If you chew with your mouth open, you deserve to have your teeth pulled out. Especially if you do so in an (almost) quiet office!

On Twitter's technical glitches:
kdarty Twitter's "Remember Me" option during Login is really annoying because it does not "remember me"... ever

On poor driving:
heysanford Is it just me or are more than 50% of California drivers direction signal challenged? 
IDKwhat2use when u r on a 2 lane hi-way and u r driving the same speed as the car next to you one of you should move over.

On social media experts and marketers on Twitter: 
brainpicker If I get another automatic "thanks for following" DM, especially from ppl who purport to be social media "experts," I'll self-combust.
jpramey Every time a "social media expert" follows 20,000 people on twitter, God kills a kitten.

If you enjoyed these rants from DailyRant's collection, you might want to visit his Twitter Rant Hall of Fame.

10 comments:

jayward70 | May 1, 2009 at 10:04 PM

i don't twitter because I thought Twitter was a home page for a twit!

Dad

Heather | May 1, 2009 at 10:47 PM

Thanks for your support Dad. BTW, the verb form of twitter is "to tweet."

Thorna Kate AKA Hear_Raven_Rant | May 2, 2009 at 10:33 AM

Ooo, I was so pleased to be blogged! It's nice to know that people like my tweets and I have tweeted this blog! Ah, nothing like internet fame!

Thorna Kate AKA Hear Raven Rant. | May 2, 2009 at 10:36 AM

Thank you for the blog mention! Ah, the joy of internet fame! I have tweeted this blog also!

Heather | May 2, 2009 at 2:10 PM

Thanks for the tweet. You said what female population worldwide thinks, but doesn't say. It was fun.

Anonymous | May 3, 2009 at 8:28 PM

Having followed you dad's blogs for over 2 years now, it's interesting to hear your perspective. I've joined so much stuff on internet, twitter could break my pc. I even followed him to toadfire, & joined to comment, when the old blog-city was not 'behaving,' well.

Anonymous | May 3, 2009 at 8:40 PM

Jesus H Christ, Jesus Heavenly Christ = the only Savior, only through him one is saved etc. But if you want to be shocked, horrified, terrified, take a look at this site:
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/

Heather | May 4, 2009 at 7:21 AM

Thanks Ida. You are the only person who answered the question. This post was part of an exercise for an online blog course given by fellow Australian, Darren Rowse, problogger. I was supposed to ask my readers a question, and to date, you are the only one who answered it.

I thought that the "H" might stand for holy, but I hadn't thought of heavenly. We used to joke that it stood for Hank, as my mother comes from a small Alberta farming community, or "a blister on the ass of the prairies," as my father used to so eloquently describe it.

"ida" 4spotmore43 | May 7, 2009 at 1:01 AM

I found D.R. and Delicious his Digital Photo web page. Good suggestion, ask your readers a question, I will remember to integrate into my future blogs. Thank You, AKA mamma.

marie antoinette | December 28, 2009 at 4:41 PM

Hello AKA mamma!

OMG the above 'twit' comment is a classic rant in itself, done with admirable concision. I love your posts, but probably need you to come over sometime and show me how to follow all the cool stuff you recommend. Knowing you has really upped my Internet knowledge and cred, so thank you. Keep it up in 2010, you journalist-with-many-other-job-titles you!

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