It's a tribute to failure in the sweetest way 

I helped my talented friend, Hilary Talbot, put a video of her charming Fail Whale sculpture in an embeddable widget this morning.

The Fail Whale meme is so funny and interesting. It's a stock image drawn by Yiying Lu that Twitter bought to display when their service is down. Now people like Hil are making what you might be tempted to call derivative art -- telescoping recursive derivativeness even, since I'm writing a post about a widget I coded from her comp of the display of a video of a sculpture of a graphic.

The term "derivative" has picked up a parasitic sneer along its evolution, but this effort doesn't deserve your derision. It's a tribute to sticking with a thing you're attached to through thick and thin. It's sweet and funny, and it's fascinating to watch it go viral, and it's something like a sport to ponder what the Twitter founders must be making of all the fuss about it.

The best adaptations are tributes -- film adaptations of novels, fanfic, song covers. I think if you don't love the original (or what it represents), that's what makes the new work derivative with an embedded sneer.

Later: Somebody needs to write a twangy country song about Twitter, about how it lets you down when you need it to be there, but you caint quit it no how.