Twitter is a computer game and Philae the space probe is winning
When it comes to adopting an online persona, the Philae comet lander is empirically better than you
(The Philae lander... taking a selfie of its foot)
Space fascinates me. It always has. I often find myself gazing whimsically up at the stars, wondering if there's a planet out there that doesn't broadcast reality TV during primetime hours, causing its inhabitants to listlessly drool on their dinner plates, while stabbing their own eyeballs with a fork to remind them they're still sentient beings. I'm hopeful there's a planet void of that. But only because the indigenous species probably don't have TVs, forks or eyeballs in the first place. They might be desperately unentertained, malnourished, blind fish-like things that hopelessly flop around until they die in a mound of their own shit. That's still a more meaningful existence than Kim Kardashian's. But yes, space fascinates me.
And nothing is fascinating me more right now than Philae, the European Space Agency’s landing probe. It's the first ever spacecraft to land on a comet, but it's also the first ever spacecraft to tickle me pink. It's got its own Twitter account and it's genuinely funny! Funnier than you anyway. All you do is retweet pictures of oily arses protruding from bin bags. You’re boring. Philae is far more interesting. When it landed on the comet it tweeted: "Touchdown! My new address is 67P!" How retweetable is that! It's on a fucking comet and the first thing it does is crack a postcode joke! What a hero.
So Philae is now hard at work, examining the comet. At least we hope it is. The landing didn't exactly go to plan. It forgot to fire its harpoons and stick itself to the surface, presumably because it was too busy tweeting the aforementioned tweet (totally worth it). As a result, it bounced and ended up planting itself somewhere effectively useless, right in the shadow of a cliff.
“You’re in a shadow? How am I supposed to spot you there?!” tweeted ESA Rosetta, the mother ship that had carried Philae 10 years into space before dropping it on the comet. Now we’ve got a full-on farce-like dialogue to enjoy! That’s definitely more interesting than Christmas or David Moyes or whatever is trending at the moment.
Anyway, being on a comet is like, a major deal. These mountain-sized lumps of rock and ice have existed since the beginning of the universe, they've inspired religious belief and, most importantly, they may have been the carrier of substances responsible for the creation of human life. They might even hold the frozen remains of aliens or robots from the future or something. It's fucking cool!
So to be on the surface, drilling, collecting data, taking selfies of its foot and nonchalantly tweeting about it as if it were a weekend trip to Cornwall, makes Philae the most venerable profile on social media. We’re all part of this MMORPG that allows us to choose a character and act out a persona, loosely based on our own in order to gain followers. Except most of us are shit at it. We can’t even get past the first level. But not Philae. Twitter is a computer game and Philae is winning.
Chris Edwards @CynicalCME
