Twits And Spurts: On Complaining

Every now and then, The Lifted Brow‘s Sam Cooney will be writing about writing on Twitter. He will be writing it in tweets, and tweeting it too. It’s all very meta, and you can read the first column here; the second, below, is about that great online pastime: complaining.

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“To complain is to be human.” A quote accredited to no one, but lots of people on the internet deliver this line with much solemnity.

If you spend any time on Twitter, you will see people complaining. The ratio is similar to the amount of penises on ChatRoulette.

Complain: protest, grumble, whine, bleat, carp, cavil, grouse, object, kick up a fuss, raise a stink, bellyache, moan, snivel, beef, bitch, sound off, gripe, kvetch.

Twitter is a mecca for whingers: access to 300 million potential sympathisers, and none of them close enough physically to punch or spit.

In earlier times, a complaint stood a chance of going unheard—maybe one yelled it into an open fridge—but now all of that shit gets typed into the internet.

A complainy tweet is the worst kind of tweet, qualitatively. Yet complainy tweets are some of the most retweeted tweets. This incongruity is baffling and annoying.

There seems to be a correlation between number of followers and percentage of tweets that are complainy. There are users with 0 followers and 100s of complainy tweets.

Twitter is full of writers, and writers, some might say (some = everyone), are prone to feeling sorry for themselves. This self-sorrow is stinky.

“That’s typically what writers do; we just sit around complaining most of the time. And the better things are going, the more they complain.” – Markus Zusak

“To whine ain’t divine.” – quote from a cancer blog titled ‘Hotel Melanoma’.

Last Friday I went and saw @birbigs (Mike Birbiglia) do his MICF comedy show. It was solid! He’s a kind of complainy guy, but in an everyman-ish way; also his haircut is hugely relatable.

Later that night, at something like 1am, I looked @birbigs up on Twitter. I hadn’t known before that moment whether he was on Twitter or not. He was, and he is.

I saw that @birbigs had tweeted recently something about the Westin Hotel Melbourne. The Westin Hotel Melbourne is a swanky and su-wanky (super wanky) hotel.

@birbigs had originally tweeted “Dear Westin, shame on you. -Mike Birbiglia” with a photo of a $7 bottle of water.

That tweet of @birbigs as of writing this sentence has been retweeted 71 times and favourited 87 times.

@birbigs had also tweeted “Dear Westin, shame on you again. $100 for the Internet? Is it 1998? -Mike Birbiglia” with a photo of a computer screen.

This second Westin-themed tweet referring to their rip-off prices was retweeted 23 times and favourited 31 times. (Bottled water rip-off > internet rip-off?)

He also found still-wrapped condoms in a rolled-up Westin yoga mat: “I just ordered a yoga mat from the front desk and there were, no joke, condoms in it.”

There’s something special about a professional comedian saying “no joke”. Do they have to use this phrase often?

The Westin Hotel people had noticed @birbigs’ tweets and had called him. He tweeted that they made him “feel bad”.

It’s pleasurable to watch global companies kowtow to individuals. Some call this “the democratisation of the market”.

The idea that a single person’s complaint of less than 140 characters can cause a multinational brand to scramble and react: this is a bit of silly modernity.

The Westin chain has a history of assuaging disgruntled customers who use Twitter to complain. The @Westin account is pretty much just them responding to complaints.

This guy, irksome as he sounds, managed to wrangle a Westin Hotel—one in Chicago—to grant his stay free, as well as upgrade his room.

The Guardian newspaper recommends you complain on Twitter, and has a ‘How To’ guide in case you need instructions.

The BBC also advocates taking your whinging to Twitter, and introduces the term ‘bashtag’, which is a giggle of a word.

“Whether or not complaining arises from genuine feelings of dissatisfaction, a state of self-focus underlies every complaint episode.” – Robin M. Kowalski

“…a perceived discrepancy between expectations and reality will result in complaining behaviour as a means of reducing the discrepancy.” – Robin M. Kowalski

“…people frequently complain when they are not subjectively dissatisfied[…]complaining varies entirely as a function of its perceived utility.” – Robin M. Kowalski

“…complaining provides an emotional release[…]the benefits of cathartic complaining stem from its capacity to make a person feel better.” – Robin M. Kowalski

The above snippets are from a book titled Aversive Interpersonal Behaviours, published in 1997. Complaining seems to be an entirely egocentrical pursuit?

Remember complaint boxes? Where you would write something on a strip of paper and slip it into a slot? When was the last time you saw one of those?

Here is a word cloud, created by collating all the tweets directed at a major American airline. “Sucks”, “worst”, “wtf”, “fail”.

Way back in June 2011 @JetBlue had no fewer than 14 people tweeting for its Twitter account, assisting, apologising and interacting. Maybe now it has 100 tweeters?

This past Valentine’s Day the account @ProFlowers received a barrage of complaints about its shitty flowers. Here’s one example.

@ProFlowers didn’t react very well. They tried to argue, instead of realising that they were starting off any conversation as already-defeated.

Companies act like people sometimes: stupid. Here’s an infographic of some great brand fuck-ups. 

Qantas tried to encourage everyone to use the hashtag #QantasLuxury as an attempt to repair its battered reputation. People hijacked it, because power to the people.

Qantas looked like giant berks running around saying “DERP DERP DERP”.

McDonald’s fucked up similarly with its hashtag #McDStories: quickly words like “diarrhea” and “diabetes” and “scalds baby chucks alive for nuggets” were being used.

Maccas doesn’t care of course, because people are gonna eat their chow no matter what: human beings are programmable.

Britons complain about the weather on Twitter more than anyone else. This is because it is often cold and rainy there.

Star Trek star Patrick Stewart tweeted that he’d “lost the will to live” after waiting 36 hours for Time Warner to install cable at his Brooklyn apartment.

Hurricane Sandy-affected people seeking their insurance companies found more success with Twitter than on the phone.

There’s a sturdy argument that using Twitter to grumble about your hurricane-smashed home is maybe an acceptable type of complaining. But still.

“Any fool can criticise, condemn and complain — and most fools do.” – Benjamin Franklin. “Never complain, never explain.” – Katharine Hepburn.

@birbigs didn’t like aspects of his hotel stay, and he said so on Twitter. Nothing’s changed, everything’s the same. He is still funny, the Westin is still a hotel.

Complaining on Twitter will make you feel better, so do it. But do it knowing that even though you feel better, you make the rest of the world feel a bit worse.

Lou Holtz, what a guy: “Never tell your problems to anyone. 20% don’t care and the other 80% are glad you have them.”

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Sam Cooney is a writer whose fiction, essays and journalism have been published in literary journals, magazines, anthologies and websites in Australia and overseas. He is the editor and publisher of Melbourne literary journal The Lifted Brow, and he tweets from @samuelcooney and @theliftedbrow.