All you need to know about the Great Bronx Zoo Cobra Honey Badger Twitter Invasion

Recently, the Bronx Zoo announced on Twitter that their Egyptian Cobra had escaped. Also recently, a video of a creature known as the Honey Badger, who happens to enjoy feasting on cobras, went viral.

Tweets were twatted, fake accounts sprang up like so many perky daffodils in springtime, and a series of memes crashed into each other, causing LOL fission of unprecedented magnitude. Boom!

Sean Bonner breaks it all down for you.

UPDATE: The Bronx Zoo cobra has been captured, according to a local news station.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Raj77

In the UK and Ireland, ‘twat’ simply means ‘nonspecific silly or unpleasant person’ and ‘twatted’ means ‘hit’.

Just sayin’.
Anonymous

For everyone mourning @BronxZoosCobra’s capture, I made an archive of everything he and his friends have been Tweeting. Enjoy and please share with your friends!

http://chirpstory.com/li/1008
- surreality
  
  Awesome, thanks!
Anonymous

It ain’t over. Just sayin’. I mean, you might THINK that things have settled down, but we here at the Monkey House have a saying: you can never rezoo a snake. @zoorevolt #emptycages #zoostrikesback
Tatsuma

I read that twitter feed from the Cobra the other day and it was the first funny thing I had read on Twitter.
Anonymous

Look at it run in slow motion. The honey badger doesn’t give a shit.
hicks

Next step: A Foursquare account.
- Sean Bonner
  
  Already happened! Read the article, the Badger checked in via foursquare ahead of where the snake was going. Lulz were had.
Ugly Canuck

What would constitute a “well-twatted” person and/or topic?

ie “That topic has been well-twatted by now.”; or,

“I have heard it said that they are well-twatted.”
Rider

Bronz Zoo?
halfpress

Tweets were… twatted… Xeni? Have to admit, that’s a new twist on tweeting that I’ve not yet considered.
- halfpress
  
  Allow me to point out, too, that the phrase amused me… I just opted not to emoticon the crap out of my query to Xeni. Seems to be a great deal of offense being taken in comments downstream for some reason…
falnfenix

i love the word “twatted.”

i’m convinced people who get offended this easily find difficulty laughing at anything.
bruckelsprout

Given the context of the post and the usage of the word, I really don’t think the intention was to offend. And I think most people here on the site will see taking offense to it as a case of hypersensitivity. However, regardless of whether or not people agree with you, you’re right. It doesn’t invalidate how you feel.

Here, sbarnes2′s original post read:
“Imma excuse you this time cos you’re a female, but Never. Say. Twatted. Again. It’s twittered. Twat is an offensive word to ladies like myself who own a vagina and don’t like it disrespected.”

…which I find offensive. First of all, sbarnes2 is typing this out as if she comes from a position of authority. “Imma excuse you this time” and the stern “Never. Say. Twatted. Again.” Is sbarnes2 in a position to dictate like this? Hardly. She is more than welcome to pack up her keyboard and mouse and click around another website, never to return to BoingBoing if she so wishes. The tone is more offensive to me than what she’s actually saying.

“Imma excuse you this time cos you’re a female” is discrimination. As the proud owner of a penis, I object to this notion that only women can say twatted (even once) but men are never to utter or type the phrase.

Everyone, during their lifetime, will be offended from time to time by SOMETHING. One cannot run around attempting to censor content everywhere they go to cater to themselves. That’s vanity of the highest order. What it comes down to, is that you vote with your clicks and your posts. If you’re offended, you may say something, and you can leave. But sbarnes2 dictated to Xeni like a corporate CEO laying down new policy. That’s going to receive a bit of backlash, even from people that would normally sympathize.
Felton / Moderator

Honey badgers FTW!
The Honey Badger

Here’s my take on the word “twat.”

HONEY BADGER DON’T CARE.
Muse

I read the Cobra feed and thought that a mongoose would be a fun response, but the Honey Badger is 10x better. This level of silliness should be encouraged. Part of me thinks that the real Bronx Zoo should have gotten in on the fun, and shown they were good sports about it all, but it could look bad if someone got bitten by the real snake.
sbarnes2

Imma excuse you this time cos you’re a female, but Never. Say. Twatted. Again. It’s twittered. Twat is an offensive word to ladies like myself who own a vagina and don’t like it disrespected.
- Anonymous
  
  Don’t be a dick. It’s an offensive word to men like myself who own a penis and don’t like it disrespected.
- emmdeeaych
  
  If you truly don’t like the disrespect please try not looking for it everywhere.
- Wendy Blackheart
  
  Sorry sbarnes2, but I am also the proud owner of a vagina, and I think the term twat is fucking fantastic. I have twatted, I’ve called people twats, I’ve called my own lady bits a twat…you don’t get to say what ‘everyone’ thinks is offensive. Also, he’s trying to conjugate the word for having twittered. There is a good chance that it might be ‘twat’. I have said to my mother, ‘oh, I just twat’ on twitter, and if she didn’t slap me, its probably ok.
  
  I also like the word cunt, and have called and been called a ‘glorious cunt’ by friends. But generally, a stranger shouldn’t try to call me a cunt.
  
  Anyway, these twats these guys keep posting are great! I enjoyed the brief alliance between the Bronx Zoo Cobra and the L Train Rat!
  - Zoman
    
    “I am also the proud owner of a vagina”.
    I heard those things devalue pretty quickly.
    
    My mistake… I thought you said Volvo. Actually, my driving instructor said something that has stuck with me to this day. He said, “Volvo – means – danger. The people that drive those things are nut-jobs.”
  - jmtorres
    
    Not every woman, but some, and I’m another who’s offended. Your experience does not invalidate mine. Nor should mine invalidate yours, but I don’t see how that makes it okay to use an offensive word in a post here.
absimiliard

Really sbarnes2? My wife doesn’t agree, she’s actually quite fond of the term. (especially as used in the British version of Queer as Folk when referring to Stuart, who is regularly called a twat)

She DOES take offense at the c-word.

But twat strikes her as cute.

So I think maybe you should just say it’s a word that’s offensive to you, rather than to all ladies who own a vagina. (and what about pre-ops, are they not women too?)

-abs realizes he’s going non-PC here, and as a man must inherently be out of order, but is pretty sure his wife has a vagina and is a woman and KNOWS she doesn’t mind the term and felt the need to point out that what offends one person should not (on their word) be taken as offensive to all persons
- jmtorres
  
  You know, I didn’t see sbarnes2 say “all women,” I saw her say “ladies like me”–which, count me as another. I winced when I saw that “twatted” in the post, and the more I thought about it, the more it upset me, because there are ways to mock tweeting without making it a gendered insult.
  
  Based on the comments and anecdotes posted here, how about not “one person is offended” but “some people are offended, and some are not,” which is frankly true about most offensive things. Your wife’s experience does not invalidate sbarnes2 and my own experience. Please do not think we are the only individuals with this opinion in a sea of women more like your wife; the data presented here does not support that conclusion.
  
  Just because some people are fine with a term some people find offensive does not make it okay to use that term in every situation. Sure, use it in conversation with your wife if she likes it that much. But why should it be on an internet post where it will be exposed to lots and lots of eyeballs, including some that find it hurtful?
  - emmdeeaych
    
    Sure, use it in conversation with your wife if she likes it that much. But why should it be on an internet post where it will be exposed to lots and lots of eyeballs, including some that find it hurtful?
    
    Wherever is the fainting couch?
Anonymous

The snake may be captured, but the adventure continues. Here’s a roundup of Tweets from @BronxZoosCobra and pals since the slithering one’s untimely capture:

http://chirpstory.com/li/1050

And here’s my archive of the full #snakeonthetown adventure on Twitter:

http://chirpstory.com/li/1008
Antinous / Moderator

Did nobody else notice the tags?

Mushroom, mushroom
- zish
  
  Came over to post that.
  A snake! A snaaaake!Ohhhh, it’s a snaaaaaake!
Anonymous

I head about this on NPR this week, now the tweeting is getting national attention.
Looks like the Bronx Zoo hired up a PR firm to get people in, in fact that Cobra is Tweeting about other very specific places (brands and stores), probably also paying this PR firm.
Somebody is cashing it.
absimiliard

I have to say, having finally followed this out and then having viewed the video of the honey badger in action, “Damn that little rodent kicks ass!”

-abs has to respect that kind of attitude, because otherwise he fears the honey badger would take him out
turn_self_off

badgers you say?
http://weebls-stuff.com/songs/badgers/