Monday 30 April 2012

Meet the 80-Year-Old Grandma on a Quest for 80,000 Twitter Followers

When the poet Dylan Thomas wrote of growing old, “do not go gentle into that good night,” it’s a safe bet he didn’t have Twitter in mind. But Josephine Lamberti does.
The 80-year-old Staten Island grandma is, as her @J_DIMPS Twitter bio puts it, on a quest for “80K followers (or maybe a million) before I die!” And she’s getting close, having already racked up more about 65,000 in less than two years on the network.
She’s become a hit with celebrities, getting retweets and DMs from pop stars and pro athletes alike and becoming something of an online celebrity in her own right. Earlier this year, the NBA player Nate Robinson invited her and her grandson to a game after chatting over Twitter.
“We went and he met us after the game,” J. Dimps says. “He wanted to meet me more than I wanted to meet him. It was awesome.”
J. Dimps — short for dimples — originally joined Twitter and began her quest for followers with the help of 24-year-old grandson Donny Brandefine.
“Well, it was getting a little boring, so he came over and we tried to figure out something to keep me busy,” she says. “We came up with this idea, and it’s been good.”
Brandefine — who Dimps calls “my right arm” — says his grandmother has always had a rambunctious personalty and that she’s taken her online celebrity acquaintances in stride. A list called MyAdoptedGrandchildren contains more than 300 celebrities she’s interacted with on Twitter or is especially fond of.
“Thats all the big stars she has following her,” Brandefine says. “To me its crazy seeing her just sit there like, ‘Yeah, Jose Canseco’s reading me, Rihanna’s reading me.’ She thinks she’s a big shot over here!”
Dimps says she remains young at heart, as if her social media presence — she’s also on Facebook and YouTube — wasn’t proof enough. She Tebows, and she represents the hashtag #OLDladySWAG. What’s old lady swag mean?
“I’m really cool, stylish,” she says. “Funny. That’s about it. I really don’t act my age.”
Dimps says she acts “maybe 21,” and her tastes have evolved since she used to ballroom dance at the Palladium concert hall.

“Now I dance to the Rihanna music,” she says. “I don’t do the lindy or things like that no more.”
Despite racking up the Twitter followers, Dimps has managed to keep a proper followed-by-to-following ratio, at about 63,000 to 5,500. So how can you get a follow back from Dimps as she makes her way to 80K?
“If they make me laugh,” she says, “I’ll follow them back.”
Will you help 80-year-old J. Dimps meet her goal of 80,000 followers? Let us know in the comments.






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