Aristocrat of the Week: @TheSofiya



Each Friday, we pick one Aristocrat we think you should follow. (Even though you should follow all of them.) Meet Sofiya Alexandra.

What was your first exposure to Twitter?
I guess when I noticed people’s Twitter jokes posting on Facebook. I was a hater then. I was like, UGH I JUST GOT COMFORTABLE WITH FACEBOOK GAWD WHY DOES EVERYTHING TERRIBLE HAPPEN TO ME! Old me was a real idiot but still very, very beautiful.

When did you really get into using the site?
I joined Twitter in May of 2010 to stay productive when I was unemployed, and to keep my brain from being too precious about coming up with new jokes. I also saw it as a fun challenge. It turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. I started following the masters, a lot of whom are on Witstream now, and thought “fuuuuuck, I wish I came up with that” about a thousand times a day. I wasn’t good. It was very humbling. Then I got a job and was chained to my computer for 9 hours a day looking at gore, hate, and porn for work, so to stay sane I really got into Twitter. I just let myself be as weird as I wanted, and started using caps lock a lot for the kind of things I would yell in my head. Then I started getting stars and retweets, and I was like, goddamit, this is going to become an addiction. Now I shoot tweets up to ten times a day, sometimes with other people’s dirty computers. I have herpes, but it’s totally worth it.

What has been your proudest Twitter moment?
An amazing thing about Twitter is the power of the medium to create interactive fun, so I really like it when people play with me on Twitter. That makes me feel really proud, when people want to play with me because of a joke I made. One time I was having one of those crazy rich burgers from Umami, that are dripping with delicious oil, so I tweeted a bunch of versions of the “my burger is so rich that…” jokes, like “my burger is so rich it just threw a cellphone at its maid,” etc. and people started tweeting me a ton of their own versions and I retweeted my favorites. I love that. There’s also obviously great joy in being followed by people I admire like Al Yankovic, which I assume happened because I looked just like him all through high school, Jon Friedman who’s hilarious, Kurt Braunohler, who’s so unique and great, Merill Markoe, whose career is just awe-inspiring. It makes you feel a little giddy, if maybe you’ve made the people whose work you’ve laughed at for years laugh. That’s what I think about when I have sex, or I cannot orgasm. :(

What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever tweeted?

Although there are quite a few contenders for that honor since a lot of my tweets are me yelling at fictional people and horses and just talkin’ butt stuff, this conversation I had with myself is real dumb.
@TheSofiya: u r great
@TheSofiya: shut up u r RT @TheSofiya u r great
@TheSofiya: omg take a compliment RT @TheSofiya shut up u r RT @TheSofiya u r great
@TheSofiya: ok u r right :) RT omg take a compliment RT @TheSofiya shut up u r RT @TheSofiya u r great
@TheSofiya: i’m takin u 2 lunch RT @TheSofiya ok u r right :) RT @TheSofiya omg take a compliment RT @TheSofiya shut up u r RT @TheSofiya u r great
@TheSofiya: omg fresh RT @TheSofiya i’m takin u 2 lunch RT ok u r right :) RT @TheSofiya omg take a compliment RT @TheSofiya shut up u r RT u r great

Or maybe it’s this:

“Strippers take yo clothes off!” ~Missy Elliot
“Can I please have another scone?” ~Sofiya Alexandra
“Sofiya seems fun.” ~Method Man

What advice would you give to aspiring comedians or comedy writers?
Now is the most exciting time and level playing field for comedians, ever. Forget the haters, “oooh, it wasn’t like this when I was young, I miss steam engines and the Black Plague and when comics were real comics.” Get over it. This is the world now. Either you embrace the change, or you become irrelevant. The Internet has blown the doors of entry into professional comedy wide open. You can live in the smallest town, and reach millions of people all over the world. The Internet is new and shiny and we’ve only begun exploring its possibilities, but it’s already revolutionized comedy. Twitter alone has changed comedy. Learn to use the Internet. Love it. And write, and film, and act, and draw, and make up songs, and animate, and do graffiti, and be goofy and try new things. Comedy is a huge umbrella, if you’re funny and you love it, and you work hard, you will find your own place in it. All you have to do is make things and put them out there and you’ll get better. And get out of the house! Comedy, like all art, is informed by experience. You will have so much more to say if you do things and enjoy life. I can’t guarantee you a sitcom, but you will have a kickass life, promise.

Sofiya Alexandra is an LA-based writer and comedian who moved here from Odessa, Ukraine at the age of 11. She’s into eating, gardening, and helping her kittens Benson and Stabler solve sexual crimes. You can see her do standup all over LA but especially at her mystery standup show SURPRISE!, you can see her act in the web series So Natural, and you can see her eat pizza in her unmentionables on her couch.

You can see more of her here and here.

Follow Sofiya on Twitter, and check her out on WitStream.
Posted 10 months ago
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    Witstream’s Aristocrat...JUST SHAT SOME PATE, Y’ALL!!
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