Twitter: What are you doing?
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 23, 2008
STOP THE MADNESS!
Two of my best Internet friends have invited me to Twitter. In case, like me, you are an old man or woman:
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Oh my gosh!!! Can you imagine?!
Okay, let’s walk through this.
- I already have a wife who asks this question, quickly and frequently. Since the introduction of the Global Husband Positioning System (i.e., cell phones and IM) this has really gotten to be quite an exact science.
- I am already, as this blog painfully proves, preposterously self obsessed, and pushing my every thought, movement, crisis, challenge, failure and experience out to the waiting millions. Plus I have … a BlackBerry, okay? I need another… thing?! (what is it? an “app”? a “platform”? a “social space”? a canker sore?) to obsess over?
- No. Just no!!!
March 23, 2008 at 4:40 pm
One of my facebook “friends” (I swear I’m going to get rid of facebook one of these days) uses twitter so I get these little instant update popups about the most incredibly inane and stupid stuff. And I have to wonder why on EARTH anyone would use this? Do you really care that I just walked upstairs with a load of laundry out of the dryer? I suspect that some people really need to get a life…
March 23, 2008 at 7:00 pm
I agree. I think it’s completely bizarre to think that anyone other than my husband (and maybe my mother) would care about the various things I do in a day, and even more bizarre that there is a website with thousands (millions?) of people doing exactly that. It’s so incredibly self-absorbed/stalkerish that it’s nauseating.
March 23, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Twitter is a fantastic tool for manic stalkers to keep tabs on everything their stalkees do.
However I have seen some purpose to it for news - if you subscribe to a good news twitter you can get the service to send updates to phones via sms. Good if you are away from the internet when some crucial news breaks, but I suppose this can be done without Twitter on most good online news services anyway…
As a social networking tool…what on earth is the point?!
March 23, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Made me laugh.
And I’m with you on this one…
March 23, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Funny — most of these same things were being said about blogs 5 or 6 years ago. So I guess, as with blogs, which took some time to become a needed function, so will Twitter.
I suspect the inane and the valueless will weed itself out, eventually.
March 24, 2008 at 2:36 am
I suspect the inane and the valueless will weed itself out, eventually.
Considering the number of inane and valueless blogs that are still out there–and that their numbers are growing–I seriously doubt your prediction will come true. I don’t know if always was this way, but myspace, facebook, twitter, et al have proven that we are currently a very self-absorbed people.
March 24, 2008 at 5:39 am
Use #1: Keep tabs on your kids.
“Son, I expect you to ‘Twitter’ every hour … ”
Aside from that … every news article I’ve read about it reports that the thing is dreadfully inane.
–|PW|–
March 24, 2008 at 11:52 am
Fern,
I suspect it was always this way, but never before have we had such an alarmingly facile vector through which to channel our infinite self-regard.
March 24, 2008 at 11:56 am
Channel, and distribute, Zach!!
March 24, 2008 at 12:10 pm
the crucial step!
March 24, 2008 at 5:10 pm
“I suspect it was always this way, but never before have we had such an alarmingly facile vector through which to channel our infinite self-regard.”
Also made me laugh.
March 25, 2008 at 7:21 pm
If it’s called Twitter, does that make the users twits?
March 30, 2008 at 2:46 am
I suspect it was always this way, but never before have we had such an alarmingly facile vector through which to channel our infinite self-regard.
You’re probably right.
If it’s called Twitter, does that make the users twits?
LOL!