Now that Twitter (s twtr) is almost eight years old, has over 200 million users and is a multibillion-dollar company, it’s easy to forget what using the service was like in the early days — what made it seem so special, and how those features helped turn it into a global media entity. That’s why it was so fascinating to read a recent piece at The Atlantic by an anonymous British shepherd, who has become a full-on devotee of Twitter, even as he pursues a way of life that has gone unchanged for centuries.

The account known as @herdyshepherd1 is run by a sheep farmer in Britain’s Lake District, and is the antithesis of the celebrity accounts that have come to dominate Twitter in recent years — the Justin Biebers and Miley Cyruses — and that likely accounts for a large part of its charm. It consists of photos of…