Welcome to HCX’s Top 20 list to the Titans of the Twittersphere. If you’re a tweeting techie and know your retweets from your hashtags, you may be familiar with most of these (But if you’re not, it’s time to become better acquainted with what you’re missing from your Tweetfeed). If you’re a twitter virgin, this list will give your little blue bird the wings to get him off the ground.
Because we’ve all been there. With the tagline that if you’re awkward you should follow them and retweet because you are not alone, this tweeter will definitely help you feel better about that horrendous happening in the Forum, Boots or your kitchen last week.
Example tweet: From “That awkward moment when you have to stare at a text for five minutes to figure out how to reply” to “That awkward moment when your crush asks you, ‘Who do you like?’”, they tweet the places we’ve all been.
Essential following if you’re a member of the brilliant and exclusive club (which most of you will be, being at Exeter). If not, follow anyway to laugh at all the ridiculously British things we can’t help ourselves from doing. Have you ever found yourself sitting awkwardly for your whole journey to accommodate the staggering leg spread of the gentleman beside you, or had the uncomfortable moment when someone realizes you’ve been allowing them to get your name wrong for quite some time? And one of the greats, spending your life squeezing by people, yet never once completing the sentence: “Excuse me, sorry, do you mind if I just…” It’s also a shame we’ll never experience the taste of the last biscuit and that we were late to yesterday’s seminar for stoically accepting our role as a doorman to an unexpectedly long queue of people. What can we say? We’re British.
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For the most mind blowing tweets, daily. Don’t say your day isn’t a little bit more enriched for knowing “Was it a car or a cat I saw?” is the only complete English sentence that’s the same when read in reverse, or that dolphins have been known to gang rape.
Turns out he didn’t die. Because 2,290,619 followers can’t be wrong about The Dark Lord’s cracking chat. From his Oscars commentary – “Even professor Trelawney could have predicted Anne Hathaway winning Best Supporting Actress” – to “Raise your hand if you don’t believe in magic, then use that hand to slap yourself in the face”, we can’t get enough of Voldemort on Twitter.
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5. Her Campus Exeter University
The best way to keep up to date with the latest articles and competitions run by your very own HCX, like how to combat the winter blues or who the latest campus cutie is. Follow Her Campus for the global articles, retweeting your favourites to make for future easy access.
Yep your day should have got a lot better finding out your favourite SATC character is on the twitter sphere. Commonly retweeting her bezzie (Bradshaw of course), we like Samantha at her honest best: “Fuck me badly once, shame on you. Fuck me badly twice, shame on me”. As always, she says what we were thinking. We were just never going to say it.
As students we end up spending a lot of time both booking and travelling on trains. Whether you’re going home or to visit friends at other Unis, following National Rail on twitter makes sure you keep informed on the inevitable delays. In case you hadn’t heard, Exeter floods.
Just really, really funny. The desire to retweet him arrives on a daily basis so I’ll try to limit myself to just a few examples: “How scary would it be if the voice inside your head stopped working?”; “Exit Twitter. Close Laptop… Get into bed, unlock phone.. Check Twitter. Totally me”; “Yelling someone’s name in different voices until they hear you”; “Why is YOLO popular all of a sudden? Was there seriously a problem of people thinking we lived twice?” Ok I could go on and on so it’s easier to just follow the link. They’re all hilarious or spot on what we’ve been thinking but never said. Like “If you never jumped from one couch to another to save yourself from the lava, then you didn’t have a childhood”.
Letting you travel the world from the library. Not quite the same but definitely the best motivation to get your essay done now ahead of an incredible summer spent actually travelling the world. Mongolia, Guyana, and France simulation at the click of a button.
For anyone going on the Exeter University ski trip, following Folie on twitter is a must. Although half their tweets are in French, we’ll take that 50% and run with it, cheers.
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To keep things in perspective. Maybe it’s for symbolism’s sake that while he has 6,433,156 followers, he follows 0. But he’s the Dalia Lama so it’s not arrogant, just amazing.
We like this twitter account for telling us the personality traits we’re pretty sure we possess but like to be told anyway. Also a very safe way of breaking the habit of reading a daily horoscope and acting in the way it tells you to. A friend whose horoscope told her she was feeling horny felt obliged (to herself) to fulfill that horoscope and went back with a boy the same night. ZodiacFact may satisfy your
To tell you the most unimportant things you’ll never need to know. Did you know that just like humans are left or right-handed, elephants are either left or right-tusked? Or that magic mushrooms can make you permanently more curious, creative and inquisitive? The new secret ingredient to add to your minestrone and get you that first.
Arguably in her prime during the Olympics (“Got a shed load of world dignitaries over for a pre-opening-ceremony gin. Mitt Romney couldn’t come, mainly due to not being invited”), the Queen is undoubtedly one of our favourite tweeters. With 1,016,799 followers, she says what the Nation’s thinking e.g. “Getting on top of one’s Christmas cards. 60p for a sodding first class stamp. Seriously considering taking the “Royal” out of “Royal mail””. Ranging from political satire to a simple declaration on November 12th for a “Duvet Day”. *
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For the latest stories, features and updates.
If there’s one person you take away from this list, make it Stephen Fry. National Treasure. Enough said.
Bump their followers to 1,806,860 for staple daily injections of inspirational and motivating wisdom. Today’s quote from Johann von Goethe, “To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking”.
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The final 3 of the list are subjective but representative…
For serious fashion aficionados, I don’t recommend following if you like clothes and have great fashion sense but will not enjoy half hourly updates on Haider Ackermann’s Paris A/W12 Show.
It’s sort of in the name but if you don’t like Disney don’t follow. Some people find their days enhanced by quotes from Piglet to Pocahontas and you may be one of them. So don’t be embarassed to follow because as Genie morphed into a bee in Aladdin and said, “Remember, bee yourself”. A kinky tweet from Toy Story, Barbie: “Will I see you again?” Ken: “I’ll see you tonight, in my dreams” but there are plenty of PG related tweets too: Pooh, “what day is it?” Piglet, “It’s today.” Pooh, “My favourite day”.
Subjective because of where your politics lie, this one’s more to highlight it’s worth having a politician on your twitter feed to keep up to date with what’s going on. Zac’s just my local. And the hottest. But follow your local MP or Exeter’s MP (Ben Bradshaw) to feel politically up to date with whoever you like.
And the very subjective bonus on our list…
Because apparently he’s marmite, and you either love him or you hate him or you love to hate him and hate loving him. But whichever of those you feel, I’m gonna bet you want to follow him. We won’t make you fess up but you secretly love him.
Other People on Twitter who Didn’t Make the Cut but Would Have
Rob Brydon, Ricky Gervais, Lord Sugar, Jemima Khan, Ross Geller, Hugh Bonneville, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Scot Schuman (aka The Sartorialist), TIME
Other People on Twitter who Didn’t Make the Cut for Reasons (Unless you really enjoy hearing about sleep patterns, people up in other people’s grills and what they’ve had for breakfast)
Rihanna, Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Kim Kardashian, P Diddy, Lindsay Lohan.
Final Words of Wisdom
For twitter newbies, know that this is a very condensed list of who to follow.
- Follow all of these and then around 200 more to get close to seeing every tweet you want to see. You’ll still see a lot that you don’t.
- Filter who you follow every few months when you realise who’s more twirpy than tweety.
- Don’t just retweet other people’s witty brainwaves. Come up with some yourself and intermingle them with what her Madge has to say.
*To avoid confusion for twitter virgins, the account is not the actual Queen’s.
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