Be part of a ‘Happening’

I’m having so much fun on Twitter, it’s unreal. I signed up about two years ago, but I didn’t really understand it until Jonathan Ross ‘outed’ me  and my followers list went from 4 to 3000 in 24 hours. Suddenly, everything I wrote in that little box had an audience…an audience that responded! Instantly!  Share a link on Twitter and within seconds someone will send you something back that casts it in a new and interesting light. Tell a joke and dozens of people are suddenly trying to better it. Ask a question and people trip over themselves trying to help. And that’s just scratching the surface–the manifold possibilities of  Twitter are enough to make you giddy. This is a new world, people! We are officially in the future, not with jetpacks, but with something much cooler–the hive mind. Ignore those grumpy luddites in the broadsheets and elsewhere, who don’t understand it, can’t be bothered to learn how it works and are frightened at the prospect that people are entertaining themselves in a way that doesn’t involve accepted media forms.

By way of illustration, I’m organising a Bad Film Club event online for Friday night (13th Feb). At exactly 9.00pm, myself and some like-minded Twitterers will be pressing ‘play’ on M Night Shyamalan’s ‘The Happening’,  and blogging our responses to the magic as it unfolds. Now, this is uncharted territory for me, and I have no way of knowing whether it’ll work, but dammit, it’s worth a shot, isn’t it? Isn’t this what ‘Why Don’t You’ told us to do, all those years ago? (Actually, it’s the polar opposite to what they told us to do, but never mind).

If you want to be part of what should be a vaguely amusing evening, here are the steps you need to take.

Sign up with Twitter. Click ‘follow’ on whoever takes your fancy. If you have a friend on it, check out the list of who he or she is following and build up your list that way. Send a few Tweets and get a feel for it.

Download Tweetdeck, for free, for Mac or PC. It’s a beautiful App and gives you a much better idea of how Twitter works than the slightly bare and functional homepage. (If you have an iPhone, download Tweetie).

On Friday night, at 9.00pm GMT, line up ‘The Happening’. I don’t have the DVD yet, so I’ll grab a copy and see where the best place to start is. We can’t time it exactly, but we can be pretty close. There are a few more details I need to iron out, but we’ll fine-tune the details on Twitter.

By the way, I chose ‘The Happening’ because it should be relatively easy for everyone to get their hands on it, and by all accounts it’s a massive stinker (thanks to @skinbro for the suggestion!).