TwitterFightClub is Here

Each year, a grand tradition continues in March (for two years running) where national security twitter folks are drafted into a tourney of 64 folks, with a series of head to head match-ups to crown the winner of Twitter Fight Club.  Last year, I was just a mere witness to the carnage.  This year, I was pleased to be nominated.  I even got seeded better than expected--#12!

The competition is explained here:  each day, one bracket competes, with the winner of each matchup being partly about who gets the most votes and who the panel thinks tweeted the best on a given day.  The winner should not be who did the best smack talk of the opponent, but rather who wrote the most interesting, engaging tweets on national security that day.  I think.  My strategy will be to try both, of course.

I am not that familiar with my first round opponent Gregory D. Johnsen.  He has three times as many followers but tweets half as much.  I expect him to win.  Why?

• Because people go with the chalk (the favorite), even though he is PhD student,
• Because he is from Princeton and the Ivy guys always get the ladies and the twitter votes,
• Because he is an expert on at least one country more than me (Yemen),
• Because he seems to have better hair.
• Because current events might compel me to tweet about Canada--sure to be a losing topic for the American-centric folks making the decisions.

My sneaky advantage: my name is actually less likely to be misspelled.  Whenever have I had that going for me?  Competition starts next week.

Follow me at @smsaideman as I try to out-tweet, out-snark, and out-last a bunch of folks who are far sharper on national security stuff.