With Great Problems Come Great Twitter Accounts

When I woke up this morning and saw what looked like Sarah Palin’s backyard outside my window (Alaska or Russia would both be an appropriate comparison in this case), I immediately checked Twitter to see whether we were having another two-hour delay or if Boston University finally grew a set of snowballs and gave us a day off. Checking my email for a BU Emergency Alert comes second since the past couple weeks of on-and-off Snowpocalypse has further confirmed for me that I’ll find out what’s going on at BU through Twitter way faster than any other resource (sorry, Facebook News Feed). I was disappointed to find out that every official BU-affiliated Twitter account wasn’t going to give me a valid excuse to be lazy and stay inside instead of joining the human game of dominoes on the BU Bridge as crossing students try not to bust their asses and fall on what’s left of the sidewalk there.

A screenshot of the @BUSnowAlert Twitter page.

I decided to give myself a snow day from my business class anyway (something that you don’t just have to be a second semester senior to do, nor does it have to be snowing really) and continue to read the cheesy, albeit entertaining wordplay on “snow” (ex: snowverit, Snoprah Winfrey, snowloko, Snowtorius B.I.G., etc. ) via my Twitter feed. And then, as if reading the minds of every annoyed BU student (or really just their tweets), @BUSnowAlert appeared on my cell phone via retweet.

Representing  the made-up “BU Department of Snow and Weather,” CGS (soon to be SMG and COM) sophomore Kevin Wang (also of @Mister_Wang) decided to give himself a snow day as well by skipping class and creating @BUSnowAlert. This Twitter account came on my radar about the same time BU decided to close the Charles River campus at the end of an average work day (5 p.m.), or as @BUSnowAlert put it, “to ensure as few students possible will benefit.” Wang’s fake Twitter account became the best thing that came out of this basically fake snow day (really, 5 p.m.?), gaining 234 followers, more than 72 mentions, and more than 100 retweets in 90 minutes. As I write this, @BUSnowAlert has reached 434 followers, surpassing other humorous BU-centric Twitter accounts that have been active longer, such as @StuffBULikes, @BUGirlProblems, and its recent spin-off, @BUGayProblems.

Tweeps everywhere can agree that Twitter is the ideal place to complain about stuff, venting in 140 characters about something that genuinely pisses you off. It’s also a great source to sarcastically mock the unfavorable actions of major institutions and companies, as @BPGlobalPR and @TSAGov have shown us. Though tweets under the fake BP Public Relations and fake TSA Twitter accounts have tapered off (I got that verb from the Boston weather report at around 5 p.m.) due to lack of relevance, we can probably expect @BUSnowAlert to amuse us for many future will-there-or-won’t-there-be BU snow days, considering how snowpocalyptic this winter in Boston has been so far. At the very least, it’s something laughable to read while you wait in two feet of snow for the BU Bus that’s never coming to bring you to your classes that never got cancelled.

UPDATE (10:50pm): Dean Elmore responds with characteristic humor to one of the better @BUSnowAlert tweets.

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/DeanElmore/status/32644758463578112″]

UPDATE (10:44am): @BUSnowAlert now has a copycat: @UMaineSnow

[blackbirdpie url=”http://twitter.com/umainesnow/status/32784189136830465″]

About Meghan Ross

Meghan Ross is a senior in SMG concentrating in marketing with a minor in advertising through COM. Despite this, she's most interested in working in the television and film industry. An uber comedy nerd, she doesn't go a day without comparing a life scenario to an old Saturday Night Live skit or some other comedy TV show she watches on rotation. She used to write for TelevisionWithoutPity.com when she interned at NBC and currently writes for butv10's The Morning After show in addition to TV, Campus & City and Technology topics for the Quad, including the weekly BU #TweetCreep. For the 140 characters version of this kinda stuff, follow her on Twitter @MeghanRRoss.

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