The People Rule
Sweden loses its Twitter mind: What happens now that the brilliant, bizarrebreastfeeding mom is out?
It's been quite a week for the Sweden's Twitter account, which has been making headlines with stream of bizarre and occasionally offensive posts from guest tweeter Sonja Abrahamsson — "a 27-year old womanlike human being from northern Sweden."
Since December, the Swedish bureau of tourism has given its @Sweden handle to a different national citizen every seven days, making for a bold experiment in free speech. The so-called Curators of Sweden encourages its rotating operators to be themselves to represent an honest portrayal of the nation. With tweets on topics ranging from masturbation to moose hunting, the experiment appears to be working.
When Sonja Abrahamsson took the reigns Monday morning, a quick bio of herself on the program's website offered a glimpse of what was to come.
When I was 19 years old I took my stuff (including my boyfriend) and moved to Gothenburg. Then I got pregnant two times in a row. Now I’m a single and low educated mother, but at least I don’t do drugs and prostitution. Instead I have a blog and I write things . . . Thinking about the future is not my specialty, apparently. But I’m excited to know if we all die the 21st of December.
Day one was fairly tame with a series of irreverent posts about her kids and Justin Bieber plus a handful of strange Photoshopped pictures.
But, day two?
Nazis, AIDS, strawberries, urine, sharks, ecstasy and a sadly misinformed conversation about Judaism. (Not a great day for the nation, although its Twitter account netted 27,000 followers in 24 hours.) Day two also included a video of Abrahamsson lip-synching "I'm Bossy," which she said she filmed when she "had a fever and nothin to do."
The rest of the week has seen a discussions of "the mom in Gilmore Girls" and Julian Assange, as well as a pro-breastfeeding thread that included a picture of Abrahamsson feeding her infant son in public next to an air hockey table.
Oh yeah, and there was this post Friday . . . one of her best since Monday: "I’ve got severe body issues. I don’t think its ugly or anything. But it can’t fly, can’t shapeshift, can’t shoot laser beams into space."
Sweden will be sticking to it freedom-of-speech policy, archiving Abrahamsson's material on the Curators of Sweden site along with the tweets from the rest of the rotating weekly curators.
