I tweeted a joke about Drew Barrymore’s tiny TV – and caused an international incident | Rebecca Shaw

Twitter/X began its death throes a while ago and is still floundering around, slowly sinking into the quicksand of the internet like the horse Artax from The Neverending Story. Sorry to all you millennials.) Now it feels very small. Its scope is limited, and involvement is significantly decreasing as more people jump into submarines.

So I was surprised last week when my tweet sparked an international incident.

I've wanted to say this for a long time, so I took this opportunity to say it, but it's a bit of a stretch.

More precisely, some annoying American was angry at me online.

As someone who has been using Twitter/X for a long time [redacted] Over the years, I have sometimes been lulled into a false sense of security when it comes to Americans. Because most Americans are cool and funny. I wasn't expecting any kind of response to the post, as Twitter has been deathly quiet lately, and there have been other lulls.

But it turns out I accidentally stirred up a beehive, just like Macaulay Culkin's character did in My Girl (sorry to remind you, Millennials). Was my terrible crime committed against the almighty United States of America? Drew Barrymore joked about having a tiny TV.

In my defense, if you look at that video, Drew Barrymore has a very small TV.

It was kind of funny that millionaire celebrities generally have such weird setups, so I thought it only made sense to lightheartedly tweet it.

Many people agreed and retweeted or participated in the post in funny ways like normal people. Other people's reactions ranged from mildly annoying to outright offensive.

We are so similar in so many ways that we sometimes forget, but this is a stark reminder of the cultural differences between Australians and Americans. Some of the latter seem biologically incapable of taking offense or making jokes. Because we forget the existence and sensibilities of other countries, we can only read jokes from a morbidly serious perspective.

Also, for some reason, many people feel the need to protect the rich and powerful, and perhaps they have fallen into some kind of delusion that they too will become rich someday and need to protect them. In this case, they were defending a very wealthy, famous woman (who crossed the picket line to produce a talk show during the writers' strike) against…tweets about the size of her TV. Thank you for your service.

Some said it was clearly not Drew's normal home (in fact, she says so in the video). People said it was because she was modest or that she was not interested in material things (she is a millionaire who owns several properties).

One person argued that it's because she's rich and doesn't waste money on good TV (I don't think buying a TV makes or breaks your wealth). Someone said, “Why do you care so much about her TV!” (I wasn't). Other people posted pictures of me and said, “Is she talking about her TV when she looks like this?” (yes?)

My favorite was the woman who simply answered with one sentence: “She never had that shitty face she had as a child.” elegant.

This is always the burden of a popular tweet – if enough people see it, even if you tweeted something as innocuous as “I like breathing air :)” You are guaranteed to receive negative and unpleasant reactions from dark corners. ”

This time, I was surprised to see that my TV Tweet received about 1,000 retweets, which is a number you wouldn't expect to cause such an uproar. But as Twitter has shrunk and many good people have left, it seems like it doesn't take long to find something annoying and awful in a tweet. The unusually emphatic reactions of humorless Americans caused a bit of a stir, and the story was picked up by multiple news sites.

I see this as all another nail in the coffin for the platform and a hit of cultural commentary, even if this woman shows that she still has some (annoying) juice .

News stories get pulled out of social media all the time, and I've done it myself at work, but I never imagined Drew Barrymore's little TV engagement joke tweet would end up being the subject of a joke. Like I never expected that joke to cause such an uproar in the first place. Maybe I should be more careful about what I tweet during the platform's final rattle, but unfortunately I ended up finding it all quite funny.

So please send this article as a warning to all celebrities. I'm going to monitor your TV settings. Shit face, even if you never had a childhood.