When Twitter started to gain popularity about 5 years ago I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. Who can get a good idea across in 140 characters? Why do I care what one-line thoughts people have? But far be it from me to resist a trend,  I eventually tried it out and immediately became a huge convert. Not only has it opened up an entirely new way of learning and communicating with everyone from my upstairs neighbor to my sister who lives in an area in Canada so remote even the Inuit think she’s nuts, but I’ve made some truly excellent friends by using it. It’s also been invaluable in keeping up with Bangkok’s occasional crises, which I’ve written about before.

Of course, quite a few people still ask me if Twitter is worth it and if they should finally sign up. My answer is usually that they should try it out, but if they don’t feel they’re missing out by now, they probably won’t get much use out of it. So I thought it was a bit funny that I was asked to take on the role of the @Bangkoking Twitter account for the week of June 3.

The account was started in June 2012, inspired by Sweden, who did something similar in December 2011. Except with Sweden, they gave the @Sweden account to a different Swede each week. It got a lot of PR at the time and it was a pretty unique idea, but of course it eventually went off the rails with some truly bizarre people taking the reins.

Even without the weird comment, this would be a weird picture.

In case you were wondering, that’s Freddie Mercury, the GREATEST ROCK PERFORMER OF ALL TIME, and it aint’ funny, @sweden!

You can see more examples of this on this strange/hilarious blog post. You can also check out the official page of the @Sweden experiment here, but it does open with a bit of funny English:

As the first country in the world, Sweden hands over the country’s official Twitter account to its citizens.The project Curators of Sweden is an initiative of the Swedish institute and VisitSweden, both part of NSU, the National Board for the promotion of Sweden.

Yeah, I understand what they’re trying to say, but all I can think of is a bunch of stone-age people sitting around going “We should start some countries. What’ll the first one be called?”

Anyway, I’m not sure how things will go but I’m told having this alternate account for a week lets you show a different side of yourself than your normally would on Twitter. Just have to make sure it’s not my rage-filled angry expat side, that’s just not cool.