Random Story – The 100-year tweet

This is just an odd little story from my life.

Over ten years ago, back when Twitter was a thing and relevant, I found a service that let you schedule your tweets.  There was a calendar, and you just picked the date you wanted for your tweet, and then you set the time and everything.  To post something in the next month, you had to click on the “Next Month” button. 

One night, I guess I was feeling a little silly, so I clicked the “Next Month” button twelve times, and scheduled a tweet to post in one year.  I forget what exactly I said, but it was something like, “I scheduled this tweet a year ago.  Do you guys have flying cars yet?” Over the next year, I patiently waited for it to be posted.  And I think someone did make a sarcastic reply about flying cars, so this one-year tweet served its purpose.

But a day or so after scheduling the one-year tweet, I was wondering if I should do a five-year, or maybe even a ten-year tweet.  Then I figured, why not go all in.  I don’t know how long it took me, but I clicked the “Next Month” button 1,200 times so I could schedule a tweet in … June 2112, or whatever.  I forget what I wrote, but I think it was something like, “I scheduled this tweet 100 years ago.  Is Twitter still a thing?  Is the internet still a thing?”

Unfortunately, my 100-year tweet will never be posted.  Mainly because I think it was about six months after my one-year tweet posted the service went belly up.  I don’t know if there is some digital archive that holds all the tweets they never got to post or if all that was just deleted. 

I’ve sat here for about five minutes trying to think of some thought-provoking thing to say about the impermanence of … well, everything.  But I got nothing.