Barry Greaves (1977 - 2009): the unsung twitterer

[imomus]

It is with great sadness that we report the death of Barry Greaves, the author of the satirical Twitter feed Twit Opera.

Greaves (32, unemployed) lived with his parents at Newfield Drive, off Selby Road in Garforth, Leeds.

"We noticed something was amiss at about six o'clock on Friday evening," Mary Greaves (58), Barry's mother, told Echo reporters.

"He hadn't taken in his lunch. I always leave it outside his door on a tray. Barry likes -- liked -- his privacy."

"Aye, he wasn't banging around like he usually does up there," echoed Barry's father Greg Greaves (62, retired). "I went over to the computer to see if he'd updated Twit Opera that day, and he hadn't. That's when we realised something was very wrong."

Since April, Barry -- a graduate of Leeds University's Engineering department -- has been writing a daily micro-parody of Click Opera, the blog of Scottish artist Momus. He became a master of Twitter's unique capacity to boil complex, interesting things down to 140 characters or less and make them look trivial and superficial.

"Twit Opera became the focus of Barry's day," Mary told reporters, "especially after he lost his job at the car wash."

"Barry tended to be restless and edgy until Momus posted. He'd reload the Click Opera homepage over and over murmuring 'Come on, come on, post, you bastard!' His day's work couldn't really start until Momus published something, you see. When the blog went up, he'd spend a couple of hours just thinking about how to make it look small, silly and self-serving. He'd compile lists of the most withering summaries he could come up with and read them aloud in different voices and accents, dressed up in front of the mirror."

"After he'd polished five or six of the most vicious summaries, Barry would take the momentous decision on which one to finally tweet. He'd do that by tossing coins or invoking spirits using his ouija board. Then he went live before his audience on Twitter. At that point there'd be a couple of minutes of euphoria -- we'd hear him punching the wall, calling out 'Gotcha!', and opening the door a few inches to take in his food."

"Then the whole process would start again."



Emergency crew were called to the scene when Greaves failed to answer prolonged and persistent knocking by his parents at his bedroom door on Friday evening. They found Greaves stretched out on his bed, dressed as the poet Chatterton. Medical staff quickly determined that his feed was tweeting feebly and his RSS was flat-lining. He was rushed to St Benedicts Parish Centre, but ceased to twitter in the ambulance. No amount of reloading could revive him.

"The thing you have to realise about Barry," said his mother Mary, "is that no matter how much he may have seemed to be slagging it off, he really loved Click Opera. He didn't intend to hurt or disparage Momus in any way."

"In fact, deep down Barry aspired to be Momus. He took everything he said to heart. For instance, when Momus declared oblong-shaped glasses had been superseded in 'a spectacles paradigm shift', Barry was devastated. He burst into the living room that day, threw his 1990s-style 'designer' spectacles -- the ones he'd worn at uni -- down on the carpet, and stamped on them repeatedly, uttering gruff shouts as he smashed them to smithereens. The next thing we knew, he had a pair of retro Raybans. He wore them when he was sleeping."

"He even had his room papered in wood-effect wallpaper to make it look like the background behind Momus's LiveJournal. Click Opera was his whole world."



"Aye," echoed Greg Greaves, "he started dressing in packing blankets and wearing them daft plastic Birkenstocks with no socks. Then he demanded to know where the greatest concentrations of Turkish guest workers were to be found in the greater Leeds area. I told him I didn't think there were any. Once I caught him looking -- with one eye covered -- at pictures of naked pregnant Japanese lasses in a dirty book. I told him 'You're just turning into a shorter version of that tosser Momus, you are!' He didn't like that one bit. He didn't like it when you said he was short, or made fun of Momus. That was his job."

Mary interrupted: "The last week was very hard on him, very hard. Momus ran a poll which revealed that most people disagreed with Barry's big theme that Click Opera was too personal to be interesting. The final straw was discovering that 30% of Click Opera readers thought that Momus wrote Twit Opera himself. Barry was crushed. Even an anonymous twitterer needs some kind of recognition, you know."

"That's why we've decided to make all this public now in the Leeds Echo, and give you the pictures to print. It's what Barry -- God rest his feed -- would have wanted."

Reprinted from the Leeds Echo, July 20th 2009

Comments

[wringham.livejournal.com]

Momus, you are a playful skamp.

But who is Virgilio Anderson?

[(Anonymous)]

Hilarious. My favourite bit:

'Aye, he wasn't banging around like he usually does up there.'

[(Anonymous)]

It's midsummer. Even Twits take holidays. He will be back.

[(Anonymous)]

good. even if an entry is a bit dull on here, there's always twit opera to look forward to.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Even Twits take holidays. He will be back.

Nice try, British Library person! But come on, nobody takes a holiday from Twitter! It follows you everywhere! It's totally mobile! It requires exactly three seconds of "work".

You're in denial. He's not updating. It's been almost a week now. It's been in the papers and everything. He's dead. It's very sad, but we need to achieve closure and move on.

[(Anonymous)]

Nice try, British Library person!

You check the IPs of every anonymous commenter? And you're ribbing "Twit Opera" for having no life? Well, I'm back from the British Library, Momus, and no doubt you'll shortly be letting your readers know my general whereabouts. But check your Twitter account you Cyclopedian wonder, and you'll see that it's me the Nostradamus, not you!

[meisjekim.livejournal.com]

i wonder what is up with the patch, i like it though, i was really close to having an eye patch for the rest of my life as a young girl when i get a fishhook in my eye. your journal is something different i appreciate it. how is berlin treating you? berlin is one of my favorite european cities. yes thats my message.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The eye thing is described (to some extent) here (http://imomus.com/matt.html).

Hey, you seem to live in Utrecht, so can I plug the fact that I have a show at the Kikker Theatre there on September 11th? It's a somewhat sad show, because it's a memorial for my Utrecht friend Jip, who died a few months ago (for real, not in the way that Barry Greaves "died").

[meisjekim.livejournal.com]

ahh no what a shitty bummer i'll be in the states on september 11th! oh holy crap! i think i just fell in love with you cause you wrote about against nature by joris karl huysmans! its one of my favorite books of all times! i will have to read about your eye and more stuff you write at a more decent time. did you really loose it? even if you did the eyepatch works for you and you are still beautiful, maybe even more so. im sorry about your friend jip :( i wish i could come see your show!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, the eye's still there, it's just wonky-looking!

As for falling in love with me, well, I think I can throw a bucket of cold water on that by showing what I actually look like, today!

[meisjekim.livejournal.com]

that cold bucket doesnt work you should've seen my ex.
luckily for you my heart is a cold bucket so love doesnt last long.
however nice to have you as a new 'friend', have a good night and if im ever around berlin or you are having a show around utrecht/amsterdam i'd like to hear about it.

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

I come back to see whether this place has suffered The Great Spotlighting Plague yet, and you've essentially become what everyone on momus_lolz (not me, I have always been of a different school of trolling) was three years ago?

I hope this is a one off. At least it took me about an hour to load this so some fun can't be too far off.

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

correction: stems violet, lenses black