Overexplaining Underappreciated Tweets #5

Twitter User:
@ysplotchy

Tweet:
Idea: Spinoff of sadtrombone website. http://www.sadpiano.com/ - plays 1st movement of Chopin's Moonlight Sonata http://bit.ly/YLBa2
(link to original tweet)


Overexplanation:
It has been a while since of one of my brilliant tweets wasn't favorited or retweeted by at least one person. Oh, don't worry. My tweets are still being underappreciated, and most likely will be until the time I reverse the aging process and start starring in photoshoots in Tiger Beat.

This might sound strange, but I was quite happy to see this particular tweet not favorited or retweeted, because I thought my idea was funny enough that I would enjoy overexplaining it.

There's a website called http://www.sadtrombone.com/ which consists of... well, just go to the damn website and listen to the sound yourself. It's a clever website, in that it just does one thing -- just a "wahhh-wahh-wahh" sound effect.

The language for online interaction has acquired lots of interesting widgets/abbreviations/symbols, a shorthand for communicating. It's very vibrant, and constantly changing.

You might see someone link to the Sad Trombone site, or simply type [sadtrombone] in plain text to imply the sound effect. Sad Trombone can connote a lot of different things. I will not attempt to unpack the nuances of it here, but trust me, it's a very fluid signifier. Did I just say "very fluid signifier"? Jeez, someone kick me in the balls, please.

Okay, so basically, Sad Trombone is a very quick way of conveying a potentially complicated emotion/feeling.

Let's talk about the genius of my tweet. FINALLY.

My idea for Sad Piano is not a web page linking to a three second sound bite, but to the entire First movement of Frédéric Chopin's Moonlight Sonata. It's a solemn, mid-tempo song, clocking in at around six minutes.

I love the idea that in the incredibly quick back-and-forth of online communication, a link to Sad Piano will ostensibly slooooow down one's movement in the online space while he or she is obliged to listen to the Chopin piece in its entirety.

Similarly, imagine seeing "[sadpiano]" at the end of someone's comment. The reader then must imagine the Chopin piece in real time before he or she can progress onto anything else.

This whole Sad Piano thing reminds of a joke Louis C.K. told in his recent stand-up concert film, Hilarious. He said he wished that people who make the "jerk-off" hand gesture are forced to continue it until they "finish". He then proceeded to demonstrate this.

Anyways, I probably didn't word my tweet well enough to convey all of the above. There was probably a better way of putting it. But I liked my idea and I had a very pleasant time overexplaining it to you.

So thank you!

P.S. The website SadPiano.com does not actually exist -- another potential reason why people did not recognize the tweet's genius.

Sad Piano :-(