Because Friday: automatically turn your tweets into staggering works of poetry
Hey wannabe poets who are too lazy to actually write anything down or think of a decent rhyme for zenith*, I have the perfect online tool for you…
Hey wannabe poets who are too lazy to actually write anything down or think of a decent rhyme for zenith*, I have the perfect online tool for you…
Hey wannabe poets who are too lazy to actually write anything down or think of a decent rhyme for zenith*, I have the perfect online tool for you…
Meet Poetweet, a simple way to generate your own sonnets, rondels and indrisos (or you know, poems if you’re totally ignorant) merely by typing in your own Twitter handle and letting its algorithm sort through your many ‘insightful’ tweets and automatically composing some gloriously evocative verse on your behalf.
It’s a bit like how David Bowie wrote the album Outside, and the following results are just about as good.
Here’s my 14 line sonnet, entitled ‘Holy Hell’.
Warning: contains swearing. But you know, it’s poetry so I can get away with it.
I particularly like the way it starts so optimistically before embarking on a journey of confusion and dismay while both my home life and the country fall apart, and by the end I’ve ripped off Duran Duran and blamed Twitter for everything.
This is post-Brexit Britain sheeple!!!
Anyway, as I’m now officially a published poet I thought I’d hold my own poetry slam contest right here on the ClickZ website. And because I know everyone’s Twitter handles, I don’t even have to ask them if they want to be involved.
First up, let’s see how editor-in-chief of ClickZ Global, Graham Charlton, holds up against my stunning lyrical flow…
The title ‘Finally Meet’ creates an expectation of romance, but sadly what follows is an indiscriminate mess of confusing nonsense, peppered with plugs for rival competitors and random conversations with imagined interlopers, which is perhaps evidence of a wandering mind.
Excellent final line though. 6/10.
I think I can comfortably say I won round one. Let’s see how I fair in round two, when I go up against our social media manager Matt Owen, who doesn’t even work for us anymore.
Here is his effort, named ‘Other Sites’.
Beautiful rhyming scheme in the first stanza, that descends into abject laziness during the second. By the end of the poem the young author seems to have renounced Twitter and offended everyone in Shoreditch. 6/10.
Another comfortable victory for me. I feel like I need more of a challenge.
As I am the editor and social manager of Search Engine Watch, one of the top four search engine related news sites of all time (can you believe there’s only four?) I’m going to test my mettle against my BITTER RIVALS, the Twitter accounts of Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal.
First here’s Search Engine Land’s effort…
I don’t like how they’ve rhymed ‘future’ with ‘feature’ and there’s an over-reliance on colons, which is odd for a poem. Then again, Graham Charlton’s effort had a hashtag in it, so what the hell do I know? I KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT POETRY THAT’S WHY I’M THE JUDGE.
Anyway, 4/10.
Next, let’s check out Search Engine Journal’s effort…
Use of an emoji gives Search Engine Journal an automatic score of 7/10. Well done! But despite their high score, my 9/10 effort (which I just awarded myself) makes me the winner. Hooray.
Around about now you’ll probably be questioning the veracity of this competition – none of the competitors have any idea they’re involved, surely a contestant can’t also be the competition judge, isn’t it unfair to compare a personal account with a branded account’s tweets, blah blah blah yawn etc…
But yes you’re right and being as I’m such a good and benevolent winner, I will submit my own branded Twitter account, Search Engine Watch, to see how it fairs against the competition.
And here it is…
Remarkable work. Really quite terrifying, yet strangely beautiful. Anyway, the competition is over now, go home everyone. Nothing to see here. Move along.
*Try using Kenneth.