Social Media Skewered

The Web comic Baratunde Thurston (The Onion) delivered a send-up of social media and the news business at last week's Mashable Media Summit. The Onion, he said, "has 2.2 million Twitter followers but follows no one in return. No one. No one." [Thurston also used the stage to unveil News from the Year 2137 - a new Onion news project offering "news so fresh it trumps real-time," Thurston said. "It's news that hasn't even happened yet."]

Here's the video:

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#Hashtag Humor

Comedian Baratunde Thurston, Web editor for The Onion, is using Twitter as an entertainment medium, organizing various tongue-in-cheek hashtag groups to skewer all aspects of American society, from politics to pundits to popular culture, in general. "Twitter hashtag groups are mini-grassroots movements that are quickly assembled and demolished and malleable and fun and they're just a great way to mess with people," Thurston says. No one is spared: some of the hashtag groups he's organized so far include #howblackareyou and #WorldsThinnestBooks [example: "Neo-con alternatives to war"]. And now he's putting together a new one. His latest tweet asks:

Thinking of seeing #NewMoon tomorrow and doing a live hate tweet of the experience. Interested?

Thurston also does a pretty good send-up of Tech conference speaker peppiness [see his talk at this past week's Web 2.0 Expo in Manhattan, below]. Who knew Twitter could be so amusing?