Ya Got Twitter, My Friends!

I fully admit that my only reason for writing this song parody was the opportunity to write “Twitterin'” where the original song had “fritterin’,” but it kind of took on a life of its own. (The “Trouble” song from The Music Man is surprisingly hard to parody for a song that has few rhymes, because most of the song is metrical patter, so you have to write unrhymed lines that fit the original metre exactly, except for that one section near the end that’s just spoken.)

And no, I don’t consider Twitter dumb — as a hidebound reactionary, I understand the purpose of Twitter a lot better than I understood MySpace — but I needed a one-syllable word that starts with a word that rhymes with “T.”

PROFESSOR HAROLD HILL, BLOGGER:
Well, ya got Twitter, my friend.
Right here, I say, Twitter right here in Twitter City.
Why, sure, I’m an internetter,
Certainly, mighty fond of bloggin’,
I’m always mighty fond of bloggin’.
I believe that when you’re given the chance to write internet rants, you take it.
Lets you constantly keep up your deep thoughts and cheap jokes.
Did you ever try and write a thousand-word post on a person you’ve never heard about?
But just as I say it takes chutzpah, self-love and stamina to write on a blogspot blog,
I say that any fool can write one line with no punctuation.
And I call those tweets,
A bunch of words with a strict, unforgiving limita-
I say, first you go for those word limitations,
Next, short, controlled blog posts!
And the next thing you know, your son is writing a pre-approved amount of words,
Submittin’ ‘em to some big editor, maybe,
Hear him talk about journalism.
Then he’ll cut and tighten and prune
And he won’t simply write whatever he wants.
Like to see some beat-down Twitter boy checkin’ his word counts?
Even online? Well, there’s much more.
Now, friends, let me tell you what is worse.
He gets one, two, three, four, five, six, followers on Twitter.
Followers who just follow, they go to Twitter when he says “come,”
With a capital “C” and that rhymes with “D” and that stands for “dumb.”

And all week long, your Twitter City youth’ll be Twitterin’ away,
I say, boys and girls’ll be Twitterin’.
Twitterin’ instead of bloggin’, DVDs, even games.
Better tweet what you’re doin’,
Never mind doin’ anything that’s cool, ‘cause it still sounds cool when you tweet about it.
Never mind plannin’ things on Facebook, till you suddenly find
You’re at home and Tweetin’ on a Saturday night, and that’s trouble.
Oh, no hot spots, there’s lots o’ trouble.
I’m thinkin’ of the kids with their Facebook status not updated, caterin’ to followers but never addin’ friends!
Ya got Twitter! Folks, right here in Twitter City,
Twitter! With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “D” and that stands for “dumb!”

Now, I know you don’t understand what your kids do,
I’m not even certain you care.
But you gotta learn what kind of phrases people pick up when they’re Twitterin’ tweets all day.
They’ll be writin’ “4-ever,” writin’ “just landed,”
Writin’ “Z-O-M-G,” a meaningless “Z,”
And writin’ crazy URLs that they made on TINYURL, that lead to clips on YouTube.
One fine night, they’re starved for subjects,
Nothing left to write, and they’re desperate.
Suddenly they’re reduced to tweeting state secrets.
Shameless tweeting that’ll tell the world, through Twitter,
How to breach our defences. Communist Russians are following!
Friends, the Twitter feed soon may feed upon us, Twitter!
(Oh, we got Twitter)
Right here in Twitter City!
(Right here in Twitter City)
With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “D” and that stands for “dumb.”
(That stands for dumb.)
We’ve surely got Twitter!
(We’ve surely got Twitter)
Right here in Twitter City!
(Right here)
Thanks to Twitterin’, soon Vladimir will blow us all to Kingdom Come.
(They gave away our secrets on Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter….)

Mothers of Twitter City,
Force your kids to do something else.
Show them the joys of Facebook and MySpace.
The minute your son goes online,
Does he tell his followers he’s in Macao
Even though he’s only in the basement?
Does he link to clips without explanation?
Does he wake up in the middle of the night
To write that he’s going to sleep?
Are pronouns creeping out of his conversation?
Does he write. A. Period.
After. Every. Word. He. Writes?
Well, if so, my friends…
Ya got Twitter!
(Oh, we got Twitter)
Right here in Twitter City!
(Right here in Twitter City)
With a capital “T” and that rhymes with “D” and that stands for “dumb.”
(That stands for dumb.)
We’ve surely got Twitter!
(We’ve surely got Twitter)
Right here in Twitter City!
(Right here)
Be true to the blog, home of BoingBoing and David Frum!
Oh, we got Twitter,
That adorable, horrible Twitter,
No wonder us hidebound, pride-bound bloggers are kinda glum.
(Kinda glum)
Oh, yes, we got Twitter, Twitter, Twitter,
Yes, we got Twitter, oh, but don’t think we’re bitter,
With a T
And a rhymin’ with D,
And that stands for dumb!
(That stands for dumb!)