Game of Jones

I am taking the week off from scraping wallpaper paste and agonizing about paint colors.  If you have any kind of social media pulse, you already know this week is GISHWHES 2014 – although you may have no clue what a GISHWHES actually is.

The Greatest Internet Scavenger Hunt The World Has Ever Seen is exactly as advertised.  It’s massive, it’s global, it’s ridiculous.  It’s entirely too much fun.  I’ve been wanting to do it for a while, so when one of my friends decided to form a team, I signed right up.

There are over 180 items on the list.  Some of them are really involved, requiring set pieces and costumes.  A handful of the items are fairly easy, pretty much all teams will be able to finish them.  One of those easy items is to set up a parody social media site for a derivation of the actor Orlando Jones and gain 400 followers by Friday.

I set up my team’s account on Twitter, along with just about everyone else.  As of this writing,  @ScorlandoJones is very close to the goal of 400.  Easily half of those followers are fellow Gishers and their parody accounts.  What is so awesomely cool, and blog-worthy, about this is the easy generosity of all involved.

Twitter is notorious for haters, trolls and blowhards.  The #brolando enterprise could have been a pack of snarling dogs fighting over bones.  It very easily could have turned ugly.

What happened instead is a love fest.  We are all Gishers, we all have the same goals and we all realize this little goal is bringing us together.  Even non-Gishers are commenting about the camaraderie and community we have built in ONLY THREE DAYS!

It’s some kind of social media miracle.  I’m delighted to be part of it and even more delighted it evolved so quickly into a system of sharing and support.

I feel inspired! Does nyone need help? #brolandosunite #Orlandopocalypse

— Orlando Jones (@OrlandoJoones) August 5, 2014

Guys we have a #babyjones here! Give em a follow! @OrlandontJones #brolandosunite #Orlandopocalypse — Orlando Jones (@thebestorlandoJ) August 5, 2014

Guys follow @GorlandoJones! They need our help! #babyjones #brolandosunite

— Orlando Jones (@thebestorlandoJ) August 5, 2014

That’s just a smattering of the most recent tweets, but you get the idea.  Wouldn’t it be nice if Twitter was always like that?  Well, there is no time for pondering deep philosophical questions today.  I need to put glitter on my set piece