X

Twitter toilet paper puts tweets where the sun don't shine

Some tweets stink. If pooh-poohing them verbally doesn't satisfy, do it literally with Twitter toilet tissue rolls.

Tim Hornyak
Crave freelancer Tim Hornyak is the author of "Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots." He has been writing about Japanese culture and technology for a decade. E-mail Tim.
Tim Hornyak
2 min read
Royal flush: Collector's Edition will print execrable tweets for $35. Shitter

Sometimes it's hard to turn the other cheek. That's when it's best to use both cheeks.

Shitter turns Twitter into toilet paper. Startup Collector's Edition will print four rolls of choice throne-room reading material for $35.

If you're the self-deprecating sort, they can be your own tweets. But it's infinitely more amusing to print out those of your least-favorite celebrity. You can choose one or several feeds for your order.

The Shitter rolls can get about four tweets per sheet; that's a lot better than this DIY Twitter toilet paper printer from Germany. Shitter, meanwhile, is printed in the U.S. and ships internationally.

Made up of three Australians and a Canadian, Collector's Edition was behind this tribute to the Aussie term "mate."

They scoured the globe to find an economical printer before settling on a company in Illinois. They began taking Shitter orders this week.

"We didn't want to make toilet paper out of Twitter per se -- we wanted to make people smile and and also comment in a way on the state of the social Web," says Collector's Edition co-founder David Gillespie, who assures me Shitter isn't just a crappy April Fools' joke.

So, should Twitter users be flattered or offended if someone flushes their words down the toilet?

"It's all fairly ephemeral anyway, isn't it?" Gillespie muses. "Looks like most of the time people are just having a laugh with each other."

He adds that some of the fun is taken out of Shitter with the late nights he spends processing feeds before sending them to the printer.

He is indeed a selfless, hardworking devotee of toilet humor.

"Our goal was never to make money, it was to put smiles on people's faces. Judging by the reactions to date, we've done that, so we've succeeded!"

Like the Shitter motto says, social media has never been so disposable.