Kristen Neel, a teenager from Georgia, was rather disappointed when Obama won, so she tweeted as follows to express her disgust with the US as follows :
A retweet count of 1,424, gosh why is that? Perhaps because there are a couple of very minor little problems here …
- Australia does not have a President, they never have, instead they have a Prime Minister.
- Their Prime Minister is not a “he”, but rather is a “she” – One can only wonder if Julia Gillard was rather surprised to discover that she was now a “he”.
- She is also not a Christian. In a 2010 interview when asked if she believed in God, Gillard stated: “No I don’t … I’m not a religious person … [I’m] a great respecter of religious beliefs but they’re not my beliefs“
So apart from that, everything else she said was factually correct – oh wait, there was nothing else.
It went viral and instantly made her famous, all it needed was one Australian to find it and then rapidly re-tweet, and so it spread like wildfire.
In her defense, she did try to claim, “I was referring to the prevous (sic) office that actually had a moral position,“. So apparently the appointment of Ms Gillard as prime minister of Australia has not caught up with Ms Neel yet. This is perhaps understandable, after all, Ms Gillard has only been PM for the past two months… oh wait no, she has been PM for over two years since June 2010.
As you might imagine, a few Australians (quite a few) decided to tweet her back …
.@kristenneel_ our “president” is a prime minister, is a woman, and is an atheist. I think you meant Antarctica. Move there.
— Gilbert (@post_rock0) November 7, 2012
@kristenneel_ You do know Australia has a progressive female leader who is an athiest? Yes? I knew you did.
— Concera Vota (@conceravota) November 7, 2012
@kristenneel_ Not one word of that sentence is true. I’m not even angry, I’m impressed.
— ABCnewsIntern (@ABCnewsIntern) November 7, 2012
.@kristenneel_ 1) Australia does not have a president.2) Our prime minister is an atheist.3) Yes, she really is.
— Mark Pesce (@mpesce) November 7, 2012
I feel sorry for @kristenneel_. USA, may I suggest more funding to Public Education to avoid another Twitter-tragedy in 4 years time.
— Ken Sekiya (@ki_sekiya) November 7, 2012
So now that she is rather famous, how has Ms Neel responded? She has rather wisely deleted her twitter account and run for cover.
So there you go then, if you want to become instantly world-famous, just make a bit of a twit of yourself on twitter.