If you've not experienced the wonders of gallows humour on Twitter yet, then you are missing out. That is Twitter at its best.
The referendum is no different, take a look at this list, compiled by Buzzfeed, of tweets that will make you laugh despite everything.
Here are a few other accounts you might find solace in:
- The Cat Reviewer. We already know cats own the internet. Here is a place where people leave reviews of unknown cats they've encountered. For a companion Twitter account, try Tom Cox.
- Robots. People complain of the prevalence of robots on Twitter, but some of them are a great source of escapism. Try Magic Realism Bot, or the Dystopian YA Novel Bot, or the Accidental Haiku which makes poems out of tweets.
- Satire. If you can't cry, laugh? Man who has it all does witty gender reversal work. Kim Kierkegaard mixes Kim Kardashian's tweets with Kierkegaard's philosophy. You can also time-travel by following Chaucer's account. The Very British Problems Twitter account dealt with the referendum result with a 'Pub?' tweet that summarized many of our despairing feelings (if that's your tea, you'll want the Queen too).
- Space! Nothing like looking at pictures of space to feel cheered, right? Check out the Mars Curiosity Rover and Rosetta Mission Twitter account. Other goodies: Bits of Pluto, HiRISE (NASA), or History of Astronomy.
- People with similar names to brands. The video below shows comedian Joe Hart reacting to the tweets directed to him by people confusing him with goalkeeper Joe Hart. My favourite of these has to be John Lewis, a computer science educator who has nothing to do with the retailer, but deals with the mistaken tweets with wonderful grace every Christmas.
What about brands?
It's not much of a surprise that Innocent Smoothie excel at Twitter - they've always made a point of hiring excellent copywriters and creating irreverent content. Ditto with Old Spice.
Other favourites include Paddy Power and LRB Bookshop (as well as many other bookshops, check out their Twitter fight!)
What's this got to do with B2B Content Marketing, Claire?
All right, all right. I am definitely not saying B2B companies should turn themselves into parody accounts or robots or share pictures of cats.
However, especially for those of you who are new to Twitter, I think it's important that you see these accounts because they are just the tip of the Iceberg of what Twitter gets up to. Have you ever noticed the trending hashtags on the left-hand side? It nearly always features one that encourages Twitter users to tweet humorous things. Today's, for instance, is #RuinShakespeare.
Point is, don't underestimate how much Twitter users want to have fun (as well as rant, and rave, and so on...).
If you are trying to engage your followers, why not inspire yourself from these Twitter accounts and try something a little more unexpected with your Twitter account?