The Tweet Life [INFOGRAPHIC]

The average shelf-life of a tweet is about 48 hours. If no one has paid attention by then, your 140 character interludes about life, love, your parents, and your jerk of a boss fade off into the Internet ether. The news is mundane. However, sometimes tweets change the world, destroy careers, and make people go insane.

If you have lots of followers, or even a few big-name ones, you could cause riots with a well-timed, carefully planned tweet. Accuse Justin Bieber of fathering another child. Mention seeing someone suspicious sneaking into the Pentagon. Every RT increases the shelf-life of your tweet. It’s the endless cycle: if you tell two friends a secret, and they tell five people, and those five people tell five more people, then soon everyone knows your secret—or your tweet.

Do you know how to hack into secure sites? On social media sites, it’s not that hard. Use your skills to hack into a major news outlet, and you can cause destruction. You could bring down big business, create a national crisis, or cause millions of people to lose money. It won’t matter if you get caught, it won’t matter if someone deletes your fabricated tweet, it won’t even matter if you get an entire account taken down. People will still know—and they’ll still believe.

Do you recognize your ability to make yourself famous, or at least infamous? Whether you’re a major star or just an ordinary person playing around in cyberspace, you can make the world know your name. Start tweeting about your antics. Engage with your tablet, laptop or cell phone from T-Mobile in this confusing behavior. Document every surreal moment of your downward spiral and people will take notice. They’ll talk about you, tweet about you, hang on your every word, and discuss what’s wrong with you and what will happen to you.

All it takes is a tweet.