08 August,2010 07:13 AM IST | | Kasmin Fernandes
What makes a tweet beautiful? Ask Marc MacKenzie. Broadcaster and Twitter celebrity Stephen Fry crowned the 41 year-old Canadian for the "most beautiful tweet" ever composed at Hay Festival. My next task is to win a Nobel prize in Twitterature, MacKenzie tells Sunday Mid Day in an exclusive interview
"Iu00a0believe we can build a better world! Of course, it'll take a whole lot of rock, water and dirt. Also, not sure where to put it."
Why it worked
When he made the announcement on the last day of the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts in mid Wales, in May this year, Fry praised the tweet for its humour and reference to the ridiculousness of people saying "we need to build a new world". "We are stuck with the world we have got," he said in an online interview.u00a0
The tweet had tweeple talking, but no one was more stoked than winner Marc (@marcmack). He was also national finalist in CBC literary contest Canada Writes, which wrapped up in May. MacKenzie had submitted 35 tweets (see box), because "it's hard to pick a favourite". "Different things will strike different people as clever or witty. With that in mind, more tweets meant a greater chance that something would resonate," he told Sunday MiD DAY in an email interview. The win bore well for MacKenzie, who had 157 followers before being declared a winner, 1,499 after the announcement, and 2,724 after today.
"The tweet worked by finding the ridiculous in the trite, and hinted at a deeper truth. On one level, it's
ridiculous in its literalism, and on another, it either pokes fun at Pollyanna-ish attitudes or expresses some hope that we actually can build a better world. Others liked it because it was a reminder that it is the only world weu00a0 have," writes MacKenzie.
A simple man
Born in New Brunswick but transplanted to Canada's oil capital Edmonton for graduate school, the 41 year-old is settled into a career in medical physics, where writing has been largely relegated to bold memos and thrilling policy documents. MacKenzie is married, has two sons and a dog.
Only a year old on Twitter -- his "Twitter age" is a year and 3 months -- MacKenzie was an early Facebook adopter. He became fairly well known among friends on Facebook as the one with the most humorous updates. It probably has something to do with the physicist's other varied interests. In his spare time, MacKenzie hosts a bi-weekly Saturday morning radio show on the community radio station, CJSR, where he is believed to have literally dozens of regular listeners. He is also a practicing martial artiste who knows just enough to, if cornered, deliver a devastating hand-over of all his valuables.
Why Twitter?
"I was intrigued by Twitter, which seemed to be like Facebook, but with only updates," he writes. MacKenzie likes the challenge of Twitter even more, though.
"If brevity is the soul of wit, forcing the compacting of a humourous idea into 140 characters encourages economy and getting to the essence of what you want to say, is challenging."
On the flipside, it also encourages bad grammar, bad spelling, atrocious abbreviation "that are manifestly not true". For instance, MacKenzie refuses to believe that people are laughing out loud as often as they say they are. "Still, I admire the form. It's like a Web 2.0 haiku," he writes.
Follow Marc MacKenzie on @marcmack
Other entries Marc sent
Between 11.59 am and 1.05 pm on June 4, MacKenzie submitted 35 tweets to the contest. His other entries included:
>>If you love someone, let them go. If they come back they're yours. If they don't, they're probably going to lay chargesu00a0 - I'm pretty sure I could sum up a day in Dublin in 5 words
or less. Take that, Joyce!
>>Why was I always the black sheep of the family? There is also the deeper mystery of why we always had to dress like livestock.
>>I'm telling the kids The Greatest Story Ever Told but, frankly, Terminator 2 isn't quite the same without the visuals.
>>I'm living deeply and sucking out all the marrow of life which, now that I think about it, is kind of disgusting.
>>Remember to just be yourself. Failing that, though, maybe you should try being Richard Branson.
>>Remember: life is a play for which there is no rehearsal and no encore. On the plus side, however, there's beer in the lobby.
