If you don’t know, there was a joke that rippled around Twitter about  ‘H from steps being dead‘. Relax, the gag was just a picture with no malice involved… but it caught on…

What I found interesting, and then annoying was how it rippled around (my) twitterverse. Initially, I heard it lots…. and lots… Some people chose to attribute (or retweet) their source with an RT, others didn’t, some attributed the person they heard the joke from, but not the person that that person had heard it from.

The next day it started to happen again as a new crowd started laughing at the same re-cycled joke… and people did the same with regards to attribution. Hearing a joke for the six hundredth time can get annoying.

And then, perhaps days after that, it hit Facebook and sparked off another round of comedians sharing the love. And still some people were more inclined to claim authorship (by omission) than to accredit the source…like, for example, Tom Hingley who isn’t pointing at the original twitpic, but a copy that has been put on a server somewhere else completely. The Facebook resurgence awoke part-time twitterers to pass the joke on… What absolute never-ending joy!

I think there’s something interesting in whether or not name their source when they pass on links, and I know sometimes you don’t have enough characters to be able to do so, and some people don’t know how to, and sometimes life is simply too short but what I think is important is what people are really thinking… Are they, deep down, knowingly stealing? Are they pretending that the gag was theirs?  Like we all do in real life… Like I did last night for example… I told a friend unloading his worries that he shouldn’t fly RyanAir because they’ve bought in a surcharge for emotional baggage… I can’t remember where I heard that meagre gag, but it got re-used, royalty, copyright and credit-free. Almost humour free too.

I’d love to see a visualisation of a twitstorm that took into account peoples’ willingness to credit the source with regards to a “H from Steps” meme or any other meme where there is clear personal benefit, such as “being a wag”

But this then lead me onto to thinking about, what are people who post links in twitter thinking? Why do they do it? What is it for? What do they gain from it? Who do they think their audience(s) is/are?

So when someone adds a link (or lots of links) in Twitter, there are a number of scenarios…

1. You’ve seen twenty times already! Argh! Unfollow!
2. You’ve seen once before already from someone you both are following
3. You have seen it before from someone this particular person isn’t following
4. You’ve seen it before from someone, and they haven’t accredited the source
5. You haven’t seen this yet

… and depending on your overall grumpiness rating, your respective reactions might be…

1. And your tweet is the one that made me realize, as a news source you are at best, late, top spamming me, unfollow
2. You are arse-licking at worst and making yourself redundant at best
3. I really didn’t need this link, I’ve already got it, you are only useful as a measure of popularity
4. Ooh… not only are you a spammer, so now you are noise AND a dirty rotten retweeter.
5. Thank you very much, that link made my day

Which makes me think, that given you can’t see your audiences’ worlds (they’re all different to yours) then when passing on links you are either always there first (you up-to-the-minute saddo) or you have a dullard audience (you saddo) or you have a one in five chance of not pissing people off.

Like those odds?

Then again, I don’t think many people care about pissing people off with the amount of stomach-lifting, puke-making tweets I see. I started collecting them, but found the stench too much to be able to keep it up… but if I get enough I’ll post a link (please RT).