A. Barrett - Blackass

21:04 | Co-sign => RT ‘@Rihanna: The one person you can’t run from is YOU!!!’

21:05 | I ♥ @Rihanna! #justsaying

21:15 | Mum & Dad have returned. Mum is crying again. My life is so not fun right now.

21:41 | OMG!!! Mummy wants to go to the mortuary 2moro to look for Furo!!!

22:17 | 2moro is officially the worst day of my life. #goodnight

My handle is @_igoni and I was born into the Twitter stream in January 2009. Apart from tweeting links to my online publications as well as other articles I’d enjoyed reading, I didn’t have much to do in my short existence. Until, that is, I found @pweetychic_tk and, through her, @efyouaruoh. Furo’s Twitter page displayed as its profile photo an image of sunglasses-wearing Neo from The Matrix , and the profile name was ‘FW’, while the bio read, ‘Lagos-based job hunter,’ and so, if not for his sister’s tweets, @efyouaruoh would have remained a cipher for ever vanished into the dead-end alleys of the Web, just another one of hundreds of millions of unverified Twitter handles with a meagre following and a preference for the pseudonymous; and, to boot, a digital persona whose final breath was drawn at 00:13 on 18 June. ‘Nepa bring light abeg,’ he tweeted, and then nothing ever again. Silence, on Twitter, is as good as death, and if life hadn’t intervened to bring us together on the day after his final tweet, I might never have found myself scrolling through the timelines of the dead, searching for the POVs of the real person in the ghosts of their digital personas.

@pweetychic_tk: Saturday, 23 June

11:15 | This is NOT a good morning. Dad is driving us to the #mortuary in Ikeja. We’re going to search for #Furo there!

12:21 | I just knew the place would be UGLY twitpic.com/bzT67oM #mortuary

12:27 | It STINKS inside!!!! twitpic.com/c4KnnIP #mortuary

12:33 | RT ‘@Nneka_Or: omg can this be Lagos?? RT @pweetychic_tk: It STINKS inside!!!! twitpic.com/c4KnnIP #mortuary’

12:33 | RT ‘@PrinceofmoJo: RT @infoeNGine: Lagos govt shuts down smelly #mortuary http://dlvr.it/2NLieR @pweetychic_tk’

13:03 | THOSE ARE DEAD PEOPLE!!! twitpic.com/bzs24bP #mortuary

13:05 | RT ‘@asiwajuayo: WTF! Naija should suffer a natural disaster! RT @pweetychic_tk: THOSE ARE DEAD PEOPLE!!! twitpic.com/bzs24bP #mortuary’

13:05 | RT ‘enugu2coventry: This is unspeakably shameful. RT @pweetychic_tk: THOSE ARE DEAD PEOPLE!!! twitpic.com/bzs24bP #mortuary’

13:06 | RT ‘@PrinceofmoJo: RT @punchonthenet: Rear Admiral’s missing daughter found in Lagos #mortuary http://dlvr.it/2NLtuM @pweetychic_tk’

13:33 | When I die I want to be cremated! On the same day! twitpic.com/ZvY80pQ #mortuary

13:48 | O_o RT ‘@gambianfaust: @pweetychic_tk My granny died & I wanted 2 keep a part of her with me. So after her cremation, I snorted the ashes.’

13:48 | RT ‘@MarkyMona: @pweetychic_tk Thx 4 raising awareness abt this prob. See the #mortuary they kept my father in! pic.twitter.com/rU1ogDtS’

14:07 | I just threw up a little in my mouth. Even dead people don’t deserve this. #mortuary

14:22 | RT ‘@PrinceofmoJo: RT @HMNews: Nigeria | Floods: #Mortuary Attendants Stack Corpses on Rooftops http://dlvr.it/2NLdG @pweetychic_tk’

14:26 | @PrinceofmoJo Stop tweeting those links at me you PERVERT!!!

14:27 | Apologies 2 my followers 4 the error, but please don’t RT or click on @PrinceofmoJo #mortuary links. They’re porn.

14:44 | RT ‘@asiwajuayo: Yay! @pweetychic_tk is the reason! RT @TrendsLagos: ‘mortuary’ is now trending in #Lagos: http://trendsmap.com/ng/lagos’

15:12 | Thanks ALL!!! My phone battery’s about to die, I have to go now. #mortuary

23:17 | OMG!!!!!! @DONJAZZY retweeted me!!!

When I’d learned enough about Furo’s story to be sure I was committed to following it to the end, I tweeted @pweetychic_tk. In remarkable time she had become a Twitter celeb, gathering seven times as many followers in a week as I had in four years, so I wasn’t certain she would respond to a Twitter lightweight like me. (Question: How did she get so many followers so fast? Answer: Check out the first page of the Google search for ‘get Twitter followers fast’. In other words, she did the work.) With this in mind — ‘this’ being my dread of getting rebuffed in public — I pondered on the approach most likely to succeed, at the same time studying her timeline for any clues that might help with my decision, which I indeed reached upon seeing a serendipitous tweet of hers. From meeting her brother I knew about our shared ethnicity, and so, to indicate to her that we had a connection deeper than Twitter esprit de corps , I greeted her in Kalabari before offering to buy her ice cream. Calculation always trumps sincerity on social media. Yet I must admit that when she not only replied my tweet but also accepted my offer, I was buffaloed.

@pweetychic_tk: Sunday, 24 June

07:33 | Good morning folks! Thanks for all the RTs & mentions yesterday!! #mortuary

07:33 | And happy Sunday to ALL my new followers! Have you seen my hashtag #Furo yet?

07:35 | So @DONJAZZY RTed me yesterday & my phone hasn’t stopped buzzing. #Thank you

08:45 | I’m off to church. Yes oh, I believe in all that bible stuff; o)

09:41 | I’m seriously craving ice cream. It’s all this hellfire talk I’m sure!

09:57 | Pastor finish soon oh so my Daddy can buy me ice cream LOL!

09:59 | TWITTER FIGHT ALERT!!!

09:59 | RT ‘@kweenofsheebah: I’m Ethiopian and I’m SO offended by @afrikais1country’

10:01 | O_o RT ‘@kweenofsheebah: @afrikais1country Ethiopians are a proud people. We’re not like the rest of you African booty scratchers. #HornPride’

10:04 | RT ‘@kweenofsheebah: @VJ_Singhing If @afrikais1country wants to mock that way of thinking it should be called AFRICA-IS-A-CONTINENT.’

10:06 | RT ‘@kweenofsheebah: @VJ_Singhing YOU shouldn’t even be on this topic of Africans! You look like you eat curry in Mumbai.’

10:08 | TWEEPS!!! See #HornPride for the latest. I’ll only retweet the best insults ha ha!

10:10 | #HornPride RT ‘@kweenofsheebah: @naijapalaver Nigeria was colonised just like the rest of Africa. Ethiopia was NOT.’

10:13 | #HornPride RT ‘@_igoni: @kweenofsheebah Seems you need reminding that tiny Eritrea kicked your butt. @pweetychic_tk’

10:15 | #HornPride RT ‘@kweenofsheebah: @_igoni Don’t tell me about butt-kicking when your people were dragged to the US to pick cotton & get whipped!’

10:15 | See my last retweet! @kweenofsheebah is subbing NIGERIANS!!! #HornPride

10:35 | NOooo! RT ‘@kweenofsheebah: @pweetychic_tk Stop hashing my tweets you repulsive Nigerian troll!’ #HornPride

11:01 | Church is finally over!!!

11:05 | Have you seen @kweenofsheebah bio? @afrikais 1country #HornPride

11:06 | @kweenofsheebah YOU live in CANADA & yet you talk shit about AFRICA???

11:31 | #HornPride RT ‘@kweenofsheebah: Shut up all you poor Africans. Go fix your starving 3rd world countries. That should keep y’all busy.’

11:50 | My fingers hurt from all the RTing, but this has got to be the best fight ever! And a BIG hello to all my new followers!!! #HornPride

11:51 |:-) #HornPride RT ‘@kweenofsheebah: All you Nigerian scammers tweeting threats at me, I’ve nothing to say to you.’

12:11 | YAY! RT ‘@lazyeyedben: #HornPride is trending! 2 days in a row @pweetychic_tk has put Lagos on the map! I love that gal!!’

12:43 | No more tweets from @kweenofsheebah in the last 20 minutes. She’s run off to lick her wounds. Good riddance to bad rubbish!

13:00 | Time for ice cream!!!

13:11 | Aargh! Mum is still waiting to see Pastor! I’m stuck here with Dad until she’s done. No ice cream! *sheds angry tears *