I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed several tweets/facebook status updates in recent weeks incorporating the phrase ‘totes amazeballs.’ Apparently this is ‘teen speak’ for totally amazing. I guess it’s a couple of syllables shorter but come on, it’s about a million times dumber. Are people actually saying this in real life regularly? Or is it just an internet thing? I know it’s an internet thing because it’s all over my social networking feeds, but the fact that most of my friends are over 20 implies that the phrase unfortunately isn’t limited to teenagers, which is even more worrying. But if people actually say it in real life when they’re hanging out? I don’t even want to think about my reaction if somebody I knew said it. I think I could just about deal with that, but if somebody I liked said it – even in an ironic way – I might have to cut them out completely. Or at least stop hanging out with them for a bit.
But in terrible news, it looks as though the phrase is set to become even bigger with the (fake) launch of a new cereal from Kellogs called ‘Totes Amazeballs.’ Of course, the only way this could have happened is through the combined power of twitter and ‘legendary’ Charlatans’ frontman Tim Burgess. Does anyone who reads Sick Chirpse even remember the Charlatans? I’m normally pretty into music but even I don’t remember them that well, although I do know they were kind of a big deal in the 90’s and I think they had a video where someone was crawling along the floor at a house party or something. I couldn’t find that on YouTube though so here’s another one. I remember this from the copious amounts of shit indie clubs I was dragged to as a teenager because it was the ‘cool’ place to go. You’ll probably remember it too, you probably didn’t know it was the Charlatans though:
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhSA8FwdS2A’]
Anyway yeah, turns out Tim Burgess had been hanging out with teenagers or going on internet message boards or twitter or something (why the hell does he even have a twitter? Are the Charlatans still relevant? Do people care what Tim Burgess is doing? Well I guess they do actually, given this article, but before that?) and encountered the ‘teen speak’ phrase Totes Amazeballs. Instantly he tweeted something about how it sounded like a breakfast cereal that Willy Wonka might invent. I tried to find the actual tweet for this article but Tim Burgess seems to be more addicted to twitter than some of the teens he fails to understand as he has tweeted about 100 times in the last day, which made this task rather difficult so ultimately I gave up.
Kellogs of course picked up on the tweet and within an hour had created the Totes Amazeballs cereal for Tim Burgess. It consisted of choco rocks, shortbread, raisins and marshmallows which, you know, sounds ‘Totes Amazeballs’ right? Thank God though Kellogs have confirmed that the cereal is not going to make it into mass production and was just a one off publicity stunt. This hasn’t stopped thousands upon thousands (apparently) of teen speak kids (who probably wear chinos and drink WKD too) tweeting the Kellogs twitter account begging for it to be released.
If ever there is a story about the dangers of social media, I think this Totes Amazeballs episode is it. The only saving grace is that the cereal won’t be going into full production; however if these excessive tweets continue there’s a possibility it might as we all know how social media can affect reality these days. So please, please PLEASE stop tweeting Kellogs about it otherwise this ridiculous phrase might be stuck with us forever. Please!
