The joy of Twitter comes from its brevity. You can quickly read a few tweets and publish one yourself while you’re waiting for that PDF to open or for the 8.02 to arrive at Stevenage. However, I’m sure we’ve all been in the situation where we have something we desperately need to tell the world but don’t have time to type out those one hundred and forty characters. This can be simply solved by nanoblogging using the the International Code of Twitter Signals (INTERTWIT).
As you may well know, the International Code of Signals (INTERCO) allows merchant and naval vessels to communicate important messages about the state of a vessel and the intent of its master or commander when there are language barriers.
For instance, raising the flags AD would mean
“I am abandoning my vessel which has suffered a nuclear accident and is a possible source of radiation danger.”
while AX1 (that old chestnut) is a pithy way of saying
“Shall I train my searchlight nearly vertical on a cloud, intermittently if possible, and, if your aircraft is seen, deflect the beam upwind and on the water to facilitate your landing?”
Taking my inspiration from INTERCO, I have made a start by developing the following INTERTWIT signals (or ‘INTERTWITSIGS’ for short)
- PRT – Please retweet
- SP – Another spammer has followed me
- SP1 – Another spammer has followed me offering service of a sexual nature
- SP2 – Another spammer has followed me offering homeopathic treatments
- SP3 – Another spammer has followed me offering HOT STOCK TIPS!
- SP4 – Another spammer has followed me offering 100 followers a day
- OYS – I wish the person in front of me would realise that, having failed to open the gates on the first three attempts, their Oyster card is unlikely to work on the fourth attempt
- LNK – This link assuaged the awful banality of my existence for a few seconds and, as I believe your existence to be similarly banal, might do the same for you
- LOL – Check out this h1larious LOLcat !!!1!1!!
- CRY – Is your work as soul-destroyingly repetitive as mine?
- SPT – So, that local sports team. Go Mallards!
- CAP – I wish people wouldn’t use capitals all the time.
- FRY – I am Stephen Fry. Look on my Twitter followers, ye mighty, and despair!
- FOL – #FollowFriday
- INC – The conversation you are having on Twitter looks quite interesting but I can’t be bothered to go back and read it all. Can I join in anyway?
- ZUY – A famous person has followed me on Twitter. W00t!
- POL – Please retweet this tweet if you are politically aware
- POL1 – Please retweet this tweet if you are a member or sympathiser of a socialist party
- POL2 – Please retweet this tweet if you are a member or sympathiser of a conservative party
- POL3 – Please retweet this tweet if you are a member or sympathiser of a liberal party
- THU – Remarkable weather conditions over [area]
- ELP – Have just seen Elvis Presley
- ELPSAL – Have just watched Elvis Presley ride Shergar to victory in the Atlantis 50 Guineas. Trainer: Lord Lucan
By using INTERTWIT, we will not only have more time to tweet, but will be able to share our lives with people who don’t even speak our language. Never again will your witty tweet be foiled by needing 157 characters; you can just look up the relevant section of INTERTWIT. You can even combine INTERTWIT codes, so that ZUI INC would indicate that, now you’ve been followed by someone famous, you demand entry into this conversation.
In emergencies, INTERCO and INTERTWIT could be combined, so that PRT CB3 would mean
I require immediate assistance; I have a serious disturbance on board. Please retweet
In order to distinguish between INTERCO and INTERTWIT signals, it may be necessary to prepend INTERTWITSIGs with a distinctive mark, or tag. It is not clear what this should be.
xD.
The idea for this came from Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens:
His questing finger moved slowly down the page, and stopped. Good old International Maritime Codes. They’d been devised eighty years before, but the men in those days had really thought hard about the kind of perils that might possibly be encountered on the deep. He picked up his pen and wrote down: “XXXV QVVX.” Translated, it meant: “Have just found Lost Continent of Atlantis. High Priest has just won quoits contest.”