Karlshochschule International University

German Regional Studies: WTF – uh – what is this #blumenkübel all about?

Autor: Patrick Breitenbach am 5.08.2010

There are a lot of clichés around “The Germans” but you definitely won’t find the attribute “humor” or “nonsense” on the menu. Today was a groundbreaking day in German history and culture. We’ve conquered the worldwide social web with fun. Or to be more accurate with just a funny little german word: Blumenkübel. Well, this little word got one of the Top5 worldwide trending topic on Twitter and the rest of the world just responded: WTF?

So what’s the story behind?
It all starts in a the german town called Münster. The local newspaper got some kind of very important breaking news on their website: Big flower bucket destroyed! One, two, three people tweeted the news on Twitter, it got retweeted and hashtagged and suddenly everybody in Germany (on Twitter) wanted to take part in this little nonsense social media experience and the whole flower bucket aka #blumenkübel viral thing lifted off.

I think this all happened because some of our “Germans” don’t wanted to be seen as people without any sense of humor anymore and I think we want to be more important, famous and be a part of it – in a different way than in the past. We wanted to hack the world of clichés and information – this time without any ulterior motives – just with fun and nonsense. (In your face Engand!)

But we are an nation of poets and philosophers as well, so we showed the world how useless news can suddenly become news with a useful label on it. Isn’t it funny, strange and unmasking at the same time?