You Can’t Escape the Attention Economy
That’s not just a tweet; that’s your original idea and your intellectual property, and maybe you can sell it
By Kaitlyn Tiffany
Back in 2011, when Twitter was young, the artist and musician Leon Chang made a joke that you might remember even if you didn’t see it: “slept over at a kids house once in third grade. saw him pour milk into bowl first, then cereal. never talked to him again. hes in jail now.” Over the years, that joke has been stolen again and again, often retold with slightly different details. It still happens. Everyone tells it as if it happened to them — as if they really knew a kid with such a weird habit and were personally disturbed by it. This never really bothered Chang, one of the better-known and most beloved personalities in a scene called “Weird Twitter.” He knew that, by and large, people were ripping the tweet off just to impress a few hundred followers.
For many years, rampant theft of tweeted jokes didn’t seem so bad. Twitter users loved to make the observation: “This website is free.” This was often posted in response to something amazing and bizarre, to express disbelief at all of the unhinged entertainment that was available for viewing at no cost whatsoever. In that context, Chang explained, if a viral marketing company or a…
