Skip to content

What I Would Have Tweeted

2022-12-16 · letter vlog · Hank · 2:56 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Nerdfighteria (also: Internet & YouTube, Health) · mode: Announcements · tags: civic or action cta, recurring series, calendar ritual

In a three-part video, Hank explains why food poisoning is hard to trace, announces he is off Twitter until January and reads the tweets he would have posted, and launches the 2022 Nerdfighteria Census, asking viewers to fill it out.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Part one: food poisoning and the different onset times of foodborne pathogens

  • ★★ Hank got food poisoning last night. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ Hank explains you can't always tell where you got food poisoning, since pathogens with the same symptoms have very different onset times: E. coli and Campylobacter two to five days, staph maybe 15 minutes. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Part two: a Twitter break until January, and the tweets Hank would have posted

  • ★★ Hank says Salmonella can take anywhere from six hours to six days. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Hank says getting sick after eating something doesn't prove that food did it, unless others who ate it also got sick, as happened to him, so he knows the cause. — 00:00:29
  • ★★★ Hank has decided not to use Twitter until January, for a holiday break and a break from whatever Twitter is, with fun and productive things to do instead. — 00:00:29 · Twitter
  • ★★ Hank still has the urge and ideas to tweet, so he reads some of the tweets he would have posted. — 00:00:58 · Twitter
  • ★ A would-be tweet asks whether bubble water is addictive; Hank would like scientists to tell him. (unsure) — 00:00:58
  • ★★ A would-be tweet says saving the world needs ways to make rich bros feel powerful without giving them real power; Hank admits it is not a nuanced take. (playful) — 00:00:58 · economic inequality

  • ★★ A would-be tweet says it's not good to be good at something bad; Hank explains it was about himself being good at tweeting, which doesn't mean he should do it. — 00:00:58 · Twitter

    “It's not good to be good at something bad.”

00:01:37 — Last would-be tweets; part three: the 2022 Nerdfighteria Census and the ask to fill it out; sign-off

  • ★★ A would-be tweet says never rag on someone's music taste: music is a glorious part of human experience and no good comes from making it worse for someone. — 00:01:37
  • ★★★ Hank announces it is time for the Nerdfighteria Census; he spent the morning in bed writing and modifying questions and adding social networks that didn't exist a year ago. — 00:01:37
  • ★★ Hank explains that every year since 2013 they have surveyed the audience to understand them; it informs their decisions and is one of his favourite parts of the year. — 00:02:24
  • ★★★ Hank asks viewers to click the link in the description and fill out the census now; he kept the video short to give them the time. — 00:02:24

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says Hank feels much better and good about not being on Twitter, which seems messy and increasingly unimportant, though that is probably how it felt to everyone not on it. (hedged) — video description · Twitter

Humor (significant)

  • Hank introduces his three-part video by comparing it to a candy bar — 00:00:00

    “Like an absolute accidental mutant of Kit Kat, this video comes to you in three parts.”

  • A would-be tweet proposes an instant noodle soup business with a pun name — 00:00:58

    “What if we started an instant Pho company like the Vietnamese noodles, and called it UnPhogettable”

  • Hank argues for pronouncing medieval as spelled, since the usual way sounds like a different phrase — 00:01:37

    “Because medieval makes it sound like it's the middle of evil.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Foodborne illness · Nerdfighteria Census

Also: Campylobacter · economic inequality · Escherichia coli · Kit Kat · Salmonella · Staphylococcus aureus · Twitter

Also centred on Nerdfighteria Census: New Channels, New Songs, and Just Plain News · My Freakish Talent · Nerdfighteria Census 2014 Results! · Corndog Ghost Attack, Book Towers, and Census · The Cold War of Nerdfighteria · Sleep Paralysis, Double-Pregnancy, and The 2016 Census

← Previous: Things are Changing Very Fast · Next → The Best Books Get Better