Could this be the ultimate list of “People to Follow on Twitter”?

Over at Esquire there’s a fun piece, “Twitter Memes That Live On: The Oral History,” that has the stories behind some of the best Twitter memes. Like “Paul Ryan Gosling” and “Zooey Asks Siri.”

Curtis Dicker knew he was onto something when the Manic Pixie Dream Girl asked her phone if it was raining. “My friend and I saw that commercial one too many times, and he mentioned it would be a funny Twitter account,” he says. Dicker devoted a month to “searching and following users who made a joke about the commercial on Twitter,” and it “snowballed from there.”

My personal favorite Twitter account (although I’m not quite sure it qualifies as a meme) is the Wise_Kaplan account. if you didn’t catch Wise’s epic tribute to Ed Koch last week you should rectify that. Also, a 2010 explanation from Slate (“Trench Coat, Unlit Cigar”) about what makes Wise (and the Hyde to his Jekyll, Cranky_Kaplan) so great:

Wise and Cranky are the children of a lost New York. From breakfast until deep into the night, they travel back and forth between the city and the bedroom community of Larchmont, N.Y., charting a path among Manhattan’s decaying cultural landmarks and greasy-spoon diners. Their heroes are the ghosts of jazz greats, long-dead stylists, and midcentury entertainers.

Between abortion and Scientology on the show this week, I wanted to offer you all something light for weekend reading. I tried. This New York Magazine profile of Bret Easton Ellis — “Bret Easton Ellis’s Real Art Form Is the Tweet” — by Vanessa Grigoriadis is mesmerizing. It maybe sort of light, but in a really dark way. Plus, Grigoriadis is so good — I would read her day planner if people under 60 still used day planners — I couldn’t not recommend it. Plus, it includes the phrase “loose-leaf-tea blogger.”

Twitter mixes literature (of an admittedly minimal sort) with performance, and it’s perfect for Ellis, who has always been, when you think about it, more of a conceptual artist than an author. The work isn’t beside the point, but it isn’t the whole point. In this new métier, each part of his persona is on view: satirist, nihilist, glamour guy, exhibitionist, knee-jerk contrarian, self-pitying cokehead, and a few other things, all of which make some laugh with glee and others avert their eyes in boredom, and even more glance back in spite of their revulsion, wondering, as one of his followers did the other day: “Is Bret Easton Ellis dead inside?” Indeed, on Twitter, just as it was with Less Than Zero almost 30 years ago, that’s still the question. It may or may not be a question he asks himself—that, too, is part of the show. Ellis has worked hard to make himself a pop-cultural monster—“monster” has been one of his nicknames—then denies that he’s anything but a middle-aged homebody.

Related and if you somehow missed it: “Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie.”

(Steve Martin’s Twitter profile photo.)

On tap for today: Steve Martin. While we won’t hear about it on the show, the actor, comic, writer, and banjo-player joined Twitter in 2010 and now has over 3 million followers. He’s collected his funniest Tweets and some of the best responses from followers in a book, which you can learn more about in this NPR interview.

Below is a sampling of recent Martin tweets:

Can you believe I was arrested for wanting to watch Oprah? And I found out later she wasn’t even home.

Drank 32 oz. soda and now moving on to heroin

It was night. Not the kind of night where the sun has set, but a night like a chicken hunkering down on a clutch of fresh quail eggs.

In legitimate armed robbery, females have a way of not losing their stuff.

Sometimes it is correct to use three semicolons: Jamie, my brother, and I got in the canoe ;;;.

Wikipedia, what is 80,000?

80,000 (eighty thousand) is the natural number that comes after 79,999 and before 80,001.

Thanks, Wikipedia.

It’s also the number of Tumblr (and Twitter) followers we now have. Thank you all. Let’s celebrate with 22.2166666 days of non-stop partying.

We used all the available tools in order to communicate with each other, collaborate and agree on a date, a time and a location for the start of the revolution. Yet, starting Jan. 28, the revolution was on the streets. It was not on Facebook, it was not on Twitter. Those were tools to relay information, to tell people the truth about what’s happening on the ground.

— Internet activist Wael Ghonim says sites like Facebook are tools that can help connect people and disseminate information to the masses, but cannot create social changes on their own.

I was writing with my heart, not my keyboard. I was writing what I felt should be written.

— On today’s Fresh Air, Internet activist Wael Ghonim talks about how his Facebook page helped start Egypt’s revolution.

The protests that led to the Egyptian revolution, were organized in part by an anonymous Facebook user. When the police found out who he was, they arrested and interrogated him. Now, Wael Ghonim is internationally famous. On tomorrow’s Fresh Air, we talk to Wael Ghonim about revolutions, Egypt, and social media.

(Tweet from Ghonim last Jan. Complete Storify to acclimate yourself.)

a map of people in chicago going to work and then going home via their geotagged tweets (via gapersblock)

Is this the structure of Chicago? (by Eric Fischer)

I think for me Twitter is the equivalent of working in an office and having those casual conversations that make … you feel less isolated in the course of writing.

— Susan Orlean on her constant Twittering. [This is what I use Tumblr for.]

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at how mainstream media outlets use Twitter.

If you’re in college/grad school/high school, you might want to look through our archives if you’re writing a research paper this year. I never thought to go to NPR as a source when writing/researching in college, but all the transcripts are up and searchable. (primary sources FTW!) Plus, you can embed audio in a powerpoint presentation, which should go over nicely.           (cartoon via newyorker)

Spread of Earthquake-Related Tweets

miguelrios:

Below is a visual of the Tweets from VA and Washington, DC one minute after the August 23 #earthquake.

The Washington Post profiles NPR’s Andy Carvin, who tweets (@acarvin) and curates the news, sometimes sending 1,400 messages a day about the ongoing uprisings in the Middle East.

“I see it as another flavor of journalism,” he says. “So I guess I’m another flavor of journalist.”

social media strategy?

Do the people on here who use Tumblr for work have a strategy?

The reason I ask is because I don’t think I have a strategy — and I think that’s why Tumblr works so well. And a person just called and asked what my strategy was and I had to admit that there isn’t one and I Tumblr when I need to take a 30-second mental break.

The way I think of Tumblr is that it’s kind of a free-for-all, post-what-have-you kind of site. Some stuff works and some stuff doesn’t. I usually post when I need to take a mental breather from writing stuff for freshair.npr.org. Sometimes I post 3 times a day. Sometimes 10. Sometimes I take a break from writing (the bulk of my day) and go through the Dashboard. 

I’d love to get your thoughts on this.