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So making the tips somewhat easier over time finally paid off: Dirk Houbrechts, aka Houbi, is the first blogger to come up with the answer to the Twittershirt riddle. The answer is in fact BAMBOO, and the guy who was kind enough to provide some bloggers / twitterati with those really cool t-shirts was Nick Verhulst, founder of the ‘new generation body wear’ shop MOBBOA.
MOBBOA distributes and publishes an e-commerce shop for textile products made from bamboo. Although just as easy to manufacture,using bamboo for clothing is more ecological than the industry standard (cotton). You can read more on the MOBBOA website, but basically bamboo textile is hypoallergenic and organic (much like the blogosphere 
), while the result is soft as silk yet durable - as the lucky ones who received a shirt can testify.
As for the background: I (Robin Wauters) met Nick at one of the OpenCoffee Club Brussels meetups and over some beers we decided to have some fun in the Belgian blogosphere / twitosphere while getting some samples of actual bamboo products out there. I for one didn’t know it existed, and I was surprised that something that’s fabricated in a more ecological fashion while having much higher quality wasn’t more popular than cotton products.
I picked some people I know or regularly read and from whom I could easily retrieve the address via whois or another way, and Nick subsequently sent some t-shirts with a cryptic Twitter URL and the question where the whole thing revolved around: “What are you wearing?”. That was the question that needed an answer, and from time to time we posted a message on Twitter with a hint. All hints combined, we figured the answer would be found out swiftly, although it took a little longer than we expected. Also, there are a number of people who didn’t receive their t-shirts after all, or who decided to be totally silent about it (which is fine, there was no obligation). As for the ones who were disappointed about not getting one, we’re sorry, but that’s called scarcity marketing ;).
These are the subtle hints that were present:
- Green background for Twitter.com/t_shirt
- WordPress template with an image of grass (bamboo is a member of the grass family)
- Twitter location: ‘found in diverse climates’
As for the messages:
“Giorgetto Giugiaro, eat me!” - One of this designer’s most notable achievements was the Fiat Panda from 1980, and pandas are notorious bamboo eaters
“You know, @netlash isn’t the only one who made a movie about me. I also tricked Lee into doing one about me” - In 2000, Spike Lee directed ‘Bamboozled‘, which means “purposefully confused, tricked or led astray”. Another possibility was Ang Lee’s ‘House of Flying Daggers’,which featured a famous martial arts fighting scene in a bamboo forest.
“I come in peace, and in a thousand species” - Bamboo is considered to bring peace and calmness in some parts, and there are about 1 000 species of bamboo in the world
“Part of me was in ‘Monsters Inc.’” - That cartoon featured a character named ‘Boo’
“I’m on Photobucket now, can you find me?” - A search query for ‘twittershirt’ leads to an image of laptops made of bamboo.
“I’m food for some creatures, the cause of death for others” - Food for pandas, but sadly once a torturing and execution method in China
“If I were a boxer, I’d be a champion in the lightweight division: I’m light, strong and extremely durable.” - the 3 most notable qualities of bamboo
“Where I’m from, they don’t really celebrate Christmas, but that shouldn’t stop me from wishing you Happy Holidays! So … Happy Holidays!” - In East-Asia, they don’t really celebrate Christmas
“I’m not a hard, fibrous, lignified structural tissue produced as secondary xylem” - If you search this, you get wood (bamboo is not wood, although it’s a woody evergreen plant and you can treat it to become some kind of wood)
“Part of me was in ‘Monsters Inc.’, remember? My other part was a jackass.” - From the TV series Jackass, the first part of the answer was “Bam” (Margera)
So that was it, hope you enjoyed it.
Houbi will be contacted soon by Nick from MOBBOA to get his free branded t-shirt, and he will also get to make 5 other bloggers happy by whatever method he pleases.
