Her name’s Betty, she lives in Australia, and she’s on Twitter. So far, so normal, right?
But here’s where it gets weird: Betty’s a chicken.
While we all know that among Twitter’s 315 million or so users there are a few animals knocking out tweets, would it be so outrageous to suggest that, well, it’s actually a human tapping out those messages? Well, not so with Betty.
I think we’d better explain.
Betty the tweeting hen is the brainchild of Australian fast-food chain Chicken Treat. The plan is to score Betty a Guinness World Record by becoming the first chicken to post a proper tweet, in this case defined as one that includes a dictionary-recognized English-language word of at least five letters. Yes, it’s kind of along the lines of the infinite monkey theorem. But with a chicken.
The team behind the marketing stunt put Betty in a high-tech henhouse eight days ago in the vain hope that all of her pecking and stomping on the computer keyboard, which is linked directly to her Twitter account, might eventually result in a comprehensible tweet, securing the hen her world record.
However, more than 550 tweets in, it’s not looking good for Betty, with most of her efforts exactly what you’d expect from a birdbrain. The closest she’s come to hitting the jackpot so far include words such as “bum” and “few”, spotted in two separate posts.
But as you can see from these examples, most of her efforts look like mathematical equations from the future. Maybe they are.
– q -90 31=0.i “q3`c – `F“ac wq yg wGBGB -I ,,,,,,,,, 8KIO0 9 N U #chickentweet
— Chicken Treat (@ChickenTreat) October 16, 2015
79./. a1 #chickentweet — Chicken Treat (@ChickenTreat) October 15, 2015
1““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““` 45y65 3e54f6 09õjm #chickentweet
— Chicken Treat (@ChickenTreat) October 15, 2015
Betty’s Twitter account has already picked up more than 10,000 followers as fans wait and hope for the feathered Twitter user to bash out a proper word, though as you’ll probably agree, it looks as if it’s going to be a long wait.
Thinking about it, perhaps Betty knows exactly what’s going on, fearing that if she does manage to send out a sensible tweet, a place in the Guinness World Records will be swiftly followed by a place in the deep fryer.
In that case, a Save Betty campaign may be just around the corner.
