youngbillymays tweets; "My dad didn't wake up this morning..."

By Rob Kall (Page 1 of 1 pages) 1 comment

Editor-in-Chief

This is a poignant, plaintive tweet that will surely be heard around the world.

Dave Weiner grabbed my attention with his tweet:
RT @davewiner "My dad didn't wake up this morning.." http://tr.im/q3YX

That took me to the twitter page of YoungBillyMays

His tweet was a little longer, a bit more poignant.

"My dad didn't wake up this morning.. I'm sure you'll all hear about it. It hasn't yet hit me but it's about to."

So I ask myself, "who is this guy Billy Mays, and a quick Google reveals he's the pitchman ubiquitous on early and late night TV.

The google search results show pics of Mays that I recognize.

flickr image by andrewstclairnyc

I click on his wikipedia entry and already, it reflects that he's died-- imagine how long it used to take the old print enyclopedias.

Billy Mays - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm writing this while sitting at a conference table at a local writers conference. Jim Donovan, the guy sitting next to me, and a friend, looks over my shoulder as I'm editing the photo I've grabbed from flickr.com, and asks me, "how did he die?"

I'm so focused on how this is more a story of a poignant "tweet," that I' haven't even let that question enter my mind.

I use google news to get a sort of answer here in the LA Times, TV pitchman Billy Mays found dead at home.

Well, not exactly an answer. I learn that Mays, who was 50, just like Michael Jackson, was found dead, no cause yet determined.

Normally, this remark might have reached a few close relatives and friends. But young Billymays has over 3400 followers, Dave Winer has over 22,000 followers. I do a twitter search on the phrase, "My dad didn't wake up this morning." Aggh. I thought I might have a scoop, writing about this, but no. The Drudgereport has tweeted it. In a short time, this young man's poignant angst has spread around the world, probably to millions, in less time than it took me to write this.

I go to Drudge and maybe I assume too soon. Matt Drudge has gone with a straight story on Mays' death.

I decide to cut here. This is a new way that hearts are touched and surely, youngbillymays will receive more "support" as he describes it in a followup tweet, than he would have otherwise. It's a bottom up call for help and a bottom response to soul in mourning. Welcome to the bottom up world we now live in. Embrace it and it will embrace you back.

update: Posted this to OpEdNews.com and Huffingtonpost.
Went back to check the twitter search and dozens more had retweeted it, including just one, anncurry with 145,000 followers.

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Rob Kall Social Media Pages:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet (more...)