In this week’s contest, we asked people to imagine that they were tweeting from an imaginary official Twitter account for Earth. We got the idea from Sweden, which has been transferring its national Twitter account from citizen to citizen, occasionally with controversial results, but we wanted to broaden the challenge somewhat. How would you, as an Earth-dweller, make sense of it for non-Earth types?
The answers took two tacks. Many respondents imagined that they were representing humanity, or instructing humanity in how to treat its home planet, which led to tweets like @cehickman’s “Love your Mother!” and @ChaseLori’s “We are a peaceful planet—unless we have a political motive or there is money to be made.” (The latter of these two, of course, is also a runner-up in our future contest “Summarize the plot of ‘Avatar.’ ”)
But many participants interpreted the challenge differently, and decided to tweet as the earth itself. Leaving aside the practical questions (How does Earth type?), this strategy resulted in some enjoyably bizarre sentient-planet conceits. There were many environmental takes on this theme (the most concise, probably, was @momattt “Atchoo!!! Sorry, I’m allergic to people,” though @lianhua’s “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” and @shelaghpepper’s “Sorry, no vacancies” came close), but others attempted variations both cultural (@anushkajasraj’s “Dear Andy Goldsworthy, I love it when you have your way with me” and @toddlerlit’s “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty apes”) and psychological (@BeccaPiano’s “Do these Pyrenees make my Australia look fat?” and @GeoffBurleson’s “No one wants to journey to my center anymore”).
In the end, it was difficult to get perspective on this contest. For starters, objective distance was impossible—all judges reside on Earth—and the two divergent strands of answers created a kind of wobbling effect. But the more we looked at the submissions, the more one in particular rose to the top, a tweet that combined technology, human greed, and the dignity of the planet. And so, the winner of this week’s contest is @mulesome’s “Hey Google, can i have a little privacy here?” As a result, that Twitter user’s location will be erased from Google Earth for exactly one second. It’s gone! O.K. It’s back. Congratulations to this week’s winner. We’ll be back on Friday with another contest.
Illustration by Saul Steinberg.
