A Peek Inside The Traffic Barrel Twitter Account Who Provides Assistance To All Of The Internet (Blog Wheel)
Blog Wheel is back again. The blog where I ask the internet what I should write about when I don't feel like coming up with my own ideas. The blog that consistently garners the least amount of clicks on all of BarstoolSports.com, but satisfies a very small portion of my Twitter following. There's always a point where I feel like the Blog Wheel is doing well, but when I look at the number of clicks it's a discouragingly low amount. Thank god I've put all of my stock in the social media app with the least amount of users and is slowly dying at the hands of a wealthy South African space guy.
The Blog Wheel topics this week were as follows:
Cheapie13
Randy (Happy Birthday)
Blue's Clues Host
Useless Skills
Nadu For A Day
Traffic Barrel
Potential Phil's To Replace Uncle Phil on Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air (Good Topic)
Making New Year's Resolutions For My Co-Workers
Traffic Barrel is the perfect selection to fit the theme of a blog that appeals to an extremely niche group of internet people. But maybe that's a good direction for me to take. It could be good job security for me to make a bunch of content focused around a small yet vocal group of Twitter users, so one day when Dave Portnoy inevitably fires after coming to the realization that I'm not actually good at this job, there will be a small groundswell of John Rich support. That's the thing about the internet. All it takes is 10 vocal people to make some noise to give the impression that everyone feels a certain way about something, when in reality they represent .000000000001% of the population. But that tiny .000000000001% can sway people who know nothing about the situation to think "Oh wow this angry group of people is probably right". So if just a handful of people aggressively tweet about how John Rich was the best hire in Barstool Sports history, then everyone else who doesn't know any better will be like, "Wow I have no clue who John Rich is, but he must be great. That's really fucked up of Barstool to fire him. I better get angry online about it because that's what I do with me life". People are already looking for any reason to come at Dave. Maybe I can tap into that group of people and use them to my advantage. Then Barstool will be forced to renew my contract, to prevent a scathing hit piece from an ultra-prestigious & well-respected journalist at the Daily Beast.
Anyways, onto the blog.
DISCLAIMER: I have never met the person behind the Traffic Barrel Twitter account. I do not know who he is. He is a person who portrays a traffic barrel on the internet. Any dirt you dig up on Traffic Barrel, I do not know about, and it cannot be used against me to have this blog stricken from the internet.
For those unfamiliar with who Traffic Barrel is, I think I can sum it up quickly. He's owns the Twitter account @TrafficBarrels, and he responds to tweets offering his assistance to the brightest minds on the internet.
I'm not sure how the general public feels about Traffic Barrel. I happen to know that internet extraordinaire, Dan "Big Cat" Katz (a man who I have personally had MULTIPLE 1-2 sentence conversations with), at one point had Traffic Barrel muted because, (remember to ask Big Cat for quote)
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I think there's a good amount of people who would say they are "super fucking annoyed by his tweets". But on the other hand, there's probably another group of people who would say that Traffic Barrel "makes them sort of laugh sometimes". My feelings on the Traffic Barrel have fluctuated over time.
As you can see, at a certain point my feelings towards Traffic Barrel went away entirely. He is now just a part of my everyday life. If he disappeared from the internet I would probably not notice. The thought of Traffic Barrel would not cross my mind, until one day somebody at a party says to me, "What ever happened to that Traffic Barrel guy? I haven't seen him tweet in a while."
I would look up his account to see that Traffic Barrel hasn't tweeted in over a year, then I would put my phone down and continue partying. It would not change the course of my life one way or another. That would be the last time I thought of Traffic Barrel. It is also possible that a different person would just start running an identical Traffic Barrel account, and I wouldn't know the difference.
I ran a quick Twitter poll to gauge other's feelings on the Traffic Barrel.
I was pleasantly surprised by the results. I thought more people who say 'no' in response to 'Traffic Barrel'. Maybe he has reached a point where people are starting to come around on him. I guess it's sort of like one of those Family Guy jokes that starts out funny, then goes for too long and gets super annoying, but they stick with it long enough that it eventually becomes funny again.
Impromptu Power Ranking of Barrels
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This is nothing against Traffic Barrel. There is just a lot of strong competition in the barrel space. The top 7 are all very formidable barrels.
Note: Barrel should be spelled with 2 L's. 1 L looks stupid. 'Barrel' looks much worse than 'barrell' in my opinion. If you're playing Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo, and you go to the save screen and hit B+A+R+R+A+L on the controller, it's a cheat code for a free 100 lives.
To complete the blog, I sent Traffic Barrel a quick Q & A
How would you assist me?
Assistance isn't defined by the actions taken to resolve one's conflict or dilemma, yet rather the the option opportunity for one to seek assistance if needed (I think he had a stroke in the middle of typing that)
How many career assists do you have?
15,806
What is the greatest assist of your career?
Saved an infant from a car crash, said infant grew up to become John Stockton
Do you ever assist people upon their request, or do you have to be the one to volunteer your assistance first?
No, short answer. Traffic Barrel is the lighthouse of assistants. Happy to elaborate.
What is your end goal for the Traffic Barrel account?
What started as an absolute joke with buddies to see how many followers an inanimate object could obtain has turned into a small cult. The goal is to continue to grow the account with little to no interaction with the outside Twitter world by simply replying "traffic barrel here for assistance if needed" or a variation of that.
Have you ever been convicted or accused of a crime that someone is going to uncover as soon as I post this blog and force me to take it down or try to cancel me like they did with that one piece of content I put a lot of time into and was actually proud of?
No.
Actually got some genuine answers out of him, along with a couple of bits. Maybe I should have asked him to elaborate on what "Traffic Barrel is the lighthouse of assistants" means, because I'm not sure what the rules of lighthouses are.
It sounds like the Traffic Barrel account is run by a group of friends, which means it will probably live on for a while. If it was just a single person, then he/she would be liable to die at any point, which would in turn kill the account. But if just one of the people who runs the Traffic Barrel account dies, then the remaining alive people will most likely continue tweeting. They might take a break from tweeting for few weeks as they adjust to life without their friend, but in the end they would come to the conclusion that their dead friend would want them to continue providing assistance. Running the account would become a nice way to memorialize him, and allow his legacy to live on through incessant tweets.
However, if some sort of tragic Traffic Barrel genocide occurred (say the leader turned the group into a cult and performed a Jonestown Style Drink-the-Kool-aid maneuver), then that might end the account for good. But again, if another group of friends decides to make their own Traffic Barrel account, and do the exact same thing, I would most likely not notice.
Blog Wheel x Traffic Barrel