Django Gold is a senior writer at The Onion and former journalist. He performs standup in Chicago and has contributed to Shouts & Murmurs, McSweeney’s, Splitsider’s humor vertical, and more. This week, I asked Gold to tell me a little about three of his favorite tweets, and we spoke about free jokes, making tweets more conceptual, and the need for virtual validation.
Gold: No matter how convinced I am that I’ve finally figured out how this comedy thing works, it only requires a smidgen of distance for me to reevaluate. Every so often I’ll revisit something I wrote one, two years ago, and it’s some serious Cro-Magnon shit. On a related note, the three tweets I selected for this article were all written in the last few months. That’s not entirely due to laziness.
How do you think your tweets have changed since you first started using Twitter?
Well, it says I joined Twitter in July 2011, so that would indicate that I was probably doing a lot of Larry Crowne tweets when I first got things going. But I do feel that most of my early jokes were flatly sarcastic, not particularly ambitious. Not that I’m elevating the art form too much nowadays, but I’d like to think that I’ll try to get a little more conceptual/interactive/whatever now that I have a better idea of how this medium works.
Would you say Twitter has affected your writing outside of the platform?
Yeah, I think that the 140 character limit really forces your hand when it comes to being concise and avoiding excessive verbiage. Or circumlocution. Or even loquacity, for that matter. That’s something I’m always working on in whatever I do – trying to reduce the number of words between one joke and the next. So Twitter’s a good tool for drilling that principle into my stupid head.
Do you ever delete tweets? Why/why not?
All the time! Mostly because I start to feel like a joke isn’t as funny as I initially thought, or is straight-up hacky. And, of course, if I notice a typo, I freak out, delete, correct, and repost. Though I actually just discovered a pretty annoying typo that I left up on one of my tweets within the last few weeks. Can YOU find it?
This is very dumb, but it makes a good point, which is that hot piss rules. It’s also a decent example of a valuable technique in comedy writing: phrase repetition. There’s a ridiculous word, then some other junk, and then the laugh hits once you see the ridiculous word a second time.
Do you have a preference between tweeting about your own life vs. pop culture vs. a mix of both?
I try not to write too much about my own life – at least not directly – as I don’t think my own life is particularly interesting. And I don’t know that I tweet about pop culture too often, or even current events, really. So what’s left? Stock tips, mostly.
What are your favorite and least favorite things about Twitter?
My favorite part is getting to read a boatload of hilarious, free jokes every single day. I frequently make fun of Twitter for its various frivolities, but that part is huge, no question. Least favorite: how needy and in constant need of validation I become when I use it. “Am I funny? The quantity of virtual badges I’ve received doesn’t support that.â€
Always love a good photo joke. I don’t know who these guys are, but I truly hope that they find whatever it is that they’re looking for.
For a picture tweet like this, do you think it’s more common that you find the picture first or think of a caption and seek out a picture for it?
I had the photo for this one and added the text later, but, generally speaking, it’s probably about half and half. I do have a few caption ideas that are just waiting for a picture to become whole. For example: “Whoa! Check this out!†If you have an image that might work for this, please shoot it my way.
Jenny Nelson lives and writes in Brooklyn and works at Funny Or Die.