Early last week, word came out that Robert Moose – a regular in our old Monday Morning Tweets series – passed away unexpectedly at the age of 42.
For a lot of OKC Twitter users, Robert Moose was a part of our daily lives; a Twitter version of our very own nightcrawler. He grew up as a HAM radio enthusiast, which transferred naturally to the rapidfire transmissions of tweets documenting police scanner traffic.
There were plenty of eulogies for Robert on the site for him, and even The Oklahoman put up a piece, but amongst the most personal I saw was from TLO favorite Mike Morgan:
Anytime I heard sirens in my neighborhood, experienced a major power outage, or was just curious about what was afoot at the 7-11 on 23rd and Penn, I could check Robert's feed and maybe get an idea of what was going on in the community. He was always tuned into local police radio scanners and would tweet out what he had heard, keeping the entire metro informed on an emerging situation long before we'd see an official report on the nightly local news.
We never met in person, but would interact on the website, and Robert always came across as a genuine, friendly, funny person, which is more than 90% of that trashfire troll-ridden website can claim. When I was running our Monday Morning Tweets, I kept a spot reserved for his most interesting tweet of the weekend, and most of the time, his would be the best part of the whole article. In honor of Robert Moose, I've picked out 10 of my favorites that made the MMT cut. Feel free to share any of your favorite memories or tweets in the comment section.
Goodbye Robert, thanks for making our lives even just a little bit better. Twitter ain't the same without you. I hope there's a 7-11 and a carwash wherever you are.
For anybody interested, Ponyboy is hosting a meet-up Tuesday, January 28th at 5pm to remember Robert. It will also be a good way to actually meet all of your other online friends and put some faces to their avi's.
