Just in time for the holidays, you can now follow Pope Benedict XVI on Twitter @pontifex. This is a term for pope--of course--and he's supposedly doing this to "connect" more with the young kids today. But seriously, is reaching out to kids something the Catholic church should be doing? I mean hasn't this caused some trouble for them in the past? But sadly, he's not actually doing the tweeting himself but one of the younger cardinals will actually be doing the tweeting. To this I say, really? C'mon, I know you are 85 but you can just add this into your schedule to do it first thing in the morning. Get up, genuflect, praise God, cross yourself, tweet #jesuschrist loves you (but not you #sinners oh and #gays), put on robe, put on slippers, go to mass. See how easy it was to slip that in there, you don't need a Cardinal for that.
The pope, however, will not be following anyone, because well, the pope follows no one--he gets followed--get it? He'll be tweeting in 8 different languages aimed at the supposed 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. And if he can get them all to follow that will be more people on Twitter than use Facebook! I'm sure this will not sit well with Zuckerberg and he's probably trying to figure out a way to entice the pope to the Facebook darkside. Though I double he'll have too much luck with that I mean it's not like Zuckerberg is Larry Ellison or even the late Steve Jobs for that matter. Plus, like Twitter, there are already dozens of "pope" accounts set up, though I think if you are trying to find religion at one of them you may get more than you bargained for.
With the pope on Twitter now people are really going to have to step up their game. It's only a matter of time before he will overtake Lady Gaga with the most followers (currently he has nearly 200,000 and it's growing) then it will be little monsters against little Catholics--forget holy war--it's a Twitter war! And what two better people to go at in 140 characters or less. Lady Gaga with her non-sensical lyrical wordplay and the pope with his obtuse Biblical references and pearls of wisdom--it's on people--mobile devices were so made for this. The hashtags are gonna fly and it's not going to be pretty. Then again it could be pretty awesome! Until the internet trolls get involved and you know they are not going to be nice, and that's why they are called trolls. Ped priest this, ped priest that...ugh..no I'm not Catholic but they are just doing it to be mean and not to make some relevant commentary for social dialogue, but that is part of the travails of internet anonymity.
A Vatican spokesman says the pope will not write his tweets personally but they will all be approved by him and will be "from his mind" but will not be "infallible" but would be considered part of the churches fallible ordinary magisterium--yeah I had to look that up on Wikipedia to see wtf that was--and I still don't get it. Anyway, it will be interesting to see if he can be as inspiring as some of the other Tweetastic folks like Neil Patrick Harris, Aziz Ansari, Nathan Fillion, Kevin Smith, Ellen Barkin, Stephen Fry--the list goes on--he definitely has a lot to live up to--or does he? I mean, he is the pope and unless Jesus or God decided to join Twitter, I'm sure he considers himself above it all, at least for now anyway, or until Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift starts trending more and then we will get some real wrath of God tweets. That'll show 'em!
The pope, however, will not be following anyone, because well, the pope follows no one--he gets followed--get it? He'll be tweeting in 8 different languages aimed at the supposed 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. And if he can get them all to follow that will be more people on Twitter than use Facebook! I'm sure this will not sit well with Zuckerberg and he's probably trying to figure out a way to entice the pope to the Facebook darkside. Though I double he'll have too much luck with that I mean it's not like Zuckerberg is Larry Ellison or even the late Steve Jobs for that matter. Plus, like Twitter, there are already dozens of "pope" accounts set up, though I think if you are trying to find religion at one of them you may get more than you bargained for.
With the pope on Twitter now people are really going to have to step up their game. It's only a matter of time before he will overtake Lady Gaga with the most followers (currently he has nearly 200,000 and it's growing) then it will be little monsters against little Catholics--forget holy war--it's a Twitter war! And what two better people to go at in 140 characters or less. Lady Gaga with her non-sensical lyrical wordplay and the pope with his obtuse Biblical references and pearls of wisdom--it's on people--mobile devices were so made for this. The hashtags are gonna fly and it's not going to be pretty. Then again it could be pretty awesome! Until the internet trolls get involved and you know they are not going to be nice, and that's why they are called trolls. Ped priest this, ped priest that...ugh..no I'm not Catholic but they are just doing it to be mean and not to make some relevant commentary for social dialogue, but that is part of the travails of internet anonymity.
A Vatican spokesman says the pope will not write his tweets personally but they will all be approved by him and will be "from his mind" but will not be "infallible" but would be considered part of the churches fallible ordinary magisterium--yeah I had to look that up on Wikipedia to see wtf that was--and I still don't get it. Anyway, it will be interesting to see if he can be as inspiring as some of the other Tweetastic folks like Neil Patrick Harris, Aziz Ansari, Nathan Fillion, Kevin Smith, Ellen Barkin, Stephen Fry--the list goes on--he definitely has a lot to live up to--or does he? I mean, he is the pope and unless Jesus or God decided to join Twitter, I'm sure he considers himself above it all, at least for now anyway, or until Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift starts trending more and then we will get some real wrath of God tweets. That'll show 'em!
As an addendum--the same day the pope announced a Twitter account Chris Brown also quietly reactivated his account after his last Twitter fiasco. As they say, where good goes, so does evil.
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