The Good, the Bad, and Twitter
Twitter has gone from Internet tool to real-world fad in the past month and change. CNN and that 70s guy have contributed a lot to this analog conversion, but as with most things I don’t understand, I blame Oprah.
Now Twitter is swarming with accounts that are either dead or dying. The frequency of tweets like “Is this thing on?” are at an all-time high. Worst yet, the Twitter tag-line of “What are you doing” is actually being answered. I don’t care what you are doing. Funny enough, Google suggests the search terms “twitter what does it mean” and “twitter what is the point” higher than “twitter what are you doing.”
The beauty of Twitter is that you need not follow those that don’t contribute to your twought trust…okay, that was bad, but you get the point. It’s just that now I need to filter through a chirpy wasteland to find people who know how to use the service. As owner if the poker blog hellscoldday.com, I may be interested in following folks that tweet about poker, but when most of the tweets are “Poker? I hardly know her!” and Lady Gaga lyrics, I contemplate an honorable death.
The other maddening consequence to the mainstreamlining of microblogging is dealing with real-world friends questioning my sanity for using the service. “Doesn’t that make you narssistic writing about yourself” “Doesn’t that make you voyeuristic reading about others.” For this, I blame Twitter’s marketing. “What are you doing?” Please. I use Twitter as my primary news source and textual entertainment. Some of the funniest one-liners on the net are found here. Most of them mine.
Okay, so maybe I am narssistic.
One Response to “The Good, the Bad, and Twitter”
You are narcissistic… but that’s what makes so many of your Twitter and blog posts so entertaining.
I, like you, use Twitter as my main source of breaking news. I tend to see it on Twitter before I see it on the TV or hear about it on the radio. The trending topics in several of the popular clients lets me know what’s going on out there before the mainstream media is even reporting on it.
If there was only a way to filter out stuff like “Jon & Kate are getting divorced” from trending topics, I would be extremely happy.