History of "bae"; Twitter-searching via Topsy

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

I've used Topsy while tracing quotations and sometimes have found
evidence of inaccessible messages. For example, Topsy may contain a
message that has been retweeted, yet the original message is
inaccessible. I think this happens when the original sender's status
is protected.

I also suspect that if an individual changes status to protected it
may retroactively protect tweets, i.e., make them inaccessible, within
Topsy, but I am not sure.

The Twitter help system does have a warning that switching on "Protect
my Tweets" is unable to block all access retroactively:

[Begin excerpt from Twitter help system message]
Tweets posted previously may still be publicly visible in some places.
[End excerpt]

Nevertheless I think Twitter tries to block access to old tweets from
newly protected accounts. I do not know the policies of other archives
of tweets.

Garson


On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 7:17 AM, Hugo <hugovk at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Hugo <hugovk at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: History of "bae"; Twitter-searching via Topsy
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Interesting article, and Topsy looks like a great tool, thanks for sharing!
> It's limited to 10 pages, but you can remove unwanted terms with a minus,
> e.g. "bae -systems -company", and can adjust the time range. A quick search
> for the earliest "bae" gives a 21 May 2007, by a London-based graphic
> designer:
>
> "a special twitter just for my firned jonny. I luv ya bae! Good luck
> tonight :)"
>
> https://twitter.com/davebowker/status/72279042
>
>
>> I found via Google that the earliest tweet containing "bae" was from
> 2005, the year before Twitter started up.
>
> The 2005 date sounds like a Google-blip, one of the first ever tweets was
> 21 March 2006:
> https://twitter.com/jack/status/20
>
>
>> However, as I was finalizing the column, there were one or two tweets
> that I wanted to have a closer look at, but which didn't turn up in the
> search when I re-ran it. I don't know if these tweets were removed by the
> users, or what. If any of you can comment on this, it would be
> useful information.
>
> Generally I doubt the users removed them, more likely the Twitter search
> API is a bit flaky. There are (command-line) tools to download someone's
> tweets, but it hits a limit at just over 3,000 tweets, so in many cases not
> so helpful for verbose tooters. Anyway, here's a good one:
> http://www.github.com/sferik/t It can be a bit tricky to set up, but you
> can then run it like this: "t timeline username --number 9000 --csv >
> username.csv". The 9000 is just an upper limit, it'll stop after about
> 3,200.
>
>
> From the article:
>
>> The earliest example of someone making this connection that I've found is
> this tweet from 2011:
>
>> My girl hates being called bae but i still call her that bc it stands for
> Before Anyone Else
>
> That's from 2 August 2011.
> https://twitter.com/HeavyD_EyeSee_K/status/98156130085240832
>
> Here's a 19 Jul 2011:
> "BAE = Before Anyone Else"
> https://twitter.com/iPunch_UglyKids/status/93228372049661953
>
>
> "Bae" is still running high in Twitter's new favorite words, loved words,
> hated words, and not-words found by @favibot, @lovihatibot and @nixibot.
>
> Hugo
>
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