For those on the East Coast, yesterday’s earthquake might not have come as a complete surprise. According to The Hollywood Reporter, news of the quake reached Twitter before the quake itself hit certain areas, with the microblogging site seeing messages like “Haha! I was able to read about the earthquake on Twitter right before I felt it! I love living in the future” and “Read about earthquake on twitter before I felt it in Boston.”
THR also linked to this particular xkcd strip as explanation of the scientific reasons why this was possible, apparently missing the punchline that was proven remarkably true yesterday.
(MORE: Apple Slides Earthquake Early Warning System into iOS 5)
The immediacy of Twitter didn’t just act as Earthquake Warning System, however; it also helped the East Coast process what had just happened, whether it was Foster Kamer’s “Excited for this week’s therapy session, in which we delve into reason why everyone else feels an earthquake, and yet I feel nothing,” Brad Plumer’s worrying “A nuclear reactor near epicenter of VA earthquake is designed to withstand a 5.9-6.1 quake: http://bit.ly/nVW1Tq We got 5.8” or John Hodgman’s “This guy in the cafe and I agree that we liked the earthquake when it first started. But now it’s like, the wrong people are into it.”
Clearly, the prevalence of earthquake-based tweets yesterday proves that, in the future, all news will have to exist in 140-character chunks. And that the majority of it will be snarky. Patton Oswalt is the new Dan Rather; you heard it here first.
MORE: Man Uses Twitter To Get Free Morton’s Steak Dinner Delivered to Airport
Graeme McMillan is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @Graemem or on Facebook at Facebook/Graeme.McMillan. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.