Lara Kretler’s blog

Something really funny happened to me today. I learned that Twitter makes a small world even smaller. That fellow Twitterers, with sharp eyes and quick minds, have my back. And that Twitter can save lives and be immensely helpful in the event of a zombie attack.

I got a Tweet this morning from a follower that made me look twice. Rich H. sent me this message. I clicked on the link he included and got to this image, which I didn’t understand at first glance. In fact, it freaked me out because about halfway down it shows my picture next to some other Twitterer’s name. Had someone stolen my photo avatar, I wondered? That’s so not cool! I shot Rich H. a Tweet reply indicating my general level of confusion.

But then, I slowed down a bit and took a closer look at the Twitter screen grab - something wasn’t right. I started reading through the Tweets and finally started to get the joke. Then I reverse hacked the URL back to the original blog post, and voila! Hilarious. A creative blogger in Australia wrote a post about what Twitter would look like in the event of an actual zombie infestation. The blogger grabbed random Twitter images and photoshopped them all together to mock up a Twitter screen reflecting a zombie attack – and guess whose photo is shown as one of the zombie fighters? That’s right, yours truly.

I love that someone did this – it’s funny and clever. I love that one of my Twitter followers came across a blog post from halfway around the world, spotted my photo avatar in the image, and took the time to send the link my way. And yes, I even love that I didn’t get the joke at first and had a momentary panic attack about my identity (well, visual identity) being stolen.

Huge, appreciative hat tip to Andrew Sayer, Rich H. and to Scott Beale/Laughing Squid for the great zombie photo. 

Remember - stay close to Twitter if the zombies really do attack.

Edit: This just gets better and better. I just found out the zombies took my face viral – check out these stats on Digg. I cannot stop laughing! Lesson learned: the social media space loves zombies. Or better yet -Twitter and zombies is a killer combination.