Fox 2 sucks at Twitter. We know this not because we follow @fox2now, we know this because we found, and now love, fox2nowpoetry.tumblr.com.
Who would have thought Fox2 would be bad at Twitter? Fox 2, KTVI, is/was the home of the famed “Web Center”, but they screw up headline tweets like nobody’s business. You may think Tweeting out new headlines with a link to the story sounds simple to do manually, or even something one could automate very easily, but here we are with mangled headline tweets such as:
Both St. Louis city bit.ly/JjhhwL #FOX2Now #STL
Helpful. Obviously that means:
Both St. Louis city and county have cancelled their monthly tornado warning tests for today because of incliment [sic] weather.
…but it could also mean “Both St. Louis city and your mom have a lot in common because the north side is baren, the east side is a mess and you’re not sure how the hell they are producing their own special cheese in such large quantities.” Scary part: That’s actually a “good” one. They get worse when the headline nub could be considered a complete sentence. For example (yes, these are all real):
CIA thwarted an underwear bit.ly/JMBs1z #FOX2Now #STL
We “thwarted” our underwear once too. Luckily we got to a bathroom quickly and then headed home for a “debriefing”…well actually all the thwarting and de_brief_ing happend in that PF Chang’s bathroom, but you get the picture.
Brentwood Police Launch Facebook bit.ly/LxTlY2 #FOX2Now#STL
Good for them. All this time Harvard was in Brentwood huh?
Kids Graduate bit.ly/L9DYoI #FOX2Now #STL
This must be a story about the County.
Overland Police investigate child bit.ly/KhqQi4 #FOX2Now #STL
Sounds dangerous.
There’s more than just these. There’s lots more and Fox 2 keeps churning them out (three from yesterday alone) and Erica Smith (@ericasmith) keeps posting them to fox2nowpoetry.tumblr.com.
Fellow Twitter users were openly mocking the 4-word tweets @fox2now was sending — and I admit, I was one of them. We were being ignored on Twitter, so I took it to the next logical step: Tumblr.
If you’re wondering what comes after Tumblr in web parody escalation, it’s a Facebook application, and then after that it’s a MySpace page for some reason…maybe this unwritten list should be updated more often.
Erica says the tweet that launched the Tumblr blog was when Fox2 claimed that Webster University had the power and balls to cancel a whole evening for everyone. Since then it’s been waiting for the next stupid @Fox2now tweet, but it seems Fox 2 may have caught on to her little game yesterday:
It appears @fox2now has fixed its Twitterfeed problem. It’s still #BadRSStoTwitter, but now with longer tweets and more ellipses.
Aww, bummer. We’ll never forget about that time the “CIA Thwarted an Underwear” though, and come on, it’s Fox “the web center” 2 we’re talking about! There will be more stupid in the weeks ahead and Erica will be there waiting with the “Create a Tumblr” page loaded in a tab at the ready.
via Twitter (where else?)