Twitter
These micro blogging sites – what’s that all about? Being able to write a few quick messages, to let your followers know what trivial non-events are happening to you on a daily basis by the hour.
Have you seen the drivel that these insightful micro blogging muppets compose?
@CompleteIdiot : bored and going to download some music from iTunes – bring it on
@UnemployedTweeters: just made some lunch and it was horrible, should have brought a sandwich, actually might make a sandwich now - LOL
When did it become interesting to listen to the micro mismanagement of individual day-to-day activities? Prior to such micro blogging babble, would any person summarise their day within 140 characters snapshots of complete stupidity to communicate with others.
Imagine coming home and telling your partner or friends all about what happened every half an hour in this format. Of course, there are those people that say “that’s the whole point of the site”.
The point of the site is to provide tweeters (I was going to replace the ‘ee’ with an ‘a’ but there’s no need for expletives) with a sense of interest from others, who rather like them have nothing really interesting to say. It’s never been interesting listen to the practicalities of people’s lives, that’s why most people’s conversation unfold as:
Partner 1: How was your day?
Partner 2: Oh, the usual
Partner 1: What did you have for lunch?
Partner 2: Nothing special
Partner 1: Did you hear about (subject x)?
Partner 2: Yeah I heard about (subject x)
Partner 1: Oh it was really interesting and (Partner 2 cuts in)
Partner 2: Don’t ruin it, pass me the remote and I’ll watch it now.
I know it’s all a generalisation, but if people went home and started recounting their day in the verbal format of a tweet it would induce a coma.
Stephen Fry’s tweet is not interesting or entertaining. It was novel at first as he more than most romanticised about the 140 character onslaught across our television screens. I find that somewhat alarming. A website that at best provides an offline text messaging service via the internet (and mobile of course) unless you hang about the so called twitter-sphere (another annoying twitterism from those that are twitterous in their twitteristic twaddle - a whole language is forming and conspiracy I sense - Twitter Gate) all day and night blogging babble. And this is being championed by a guy who can’t deliver a verbal sentence without flowering it up beyond 1000 characters of self congratulations. And I like Stephen Fry but even I have limits. My proposal is Mr. Fry should deploy Twitter into his vocabulary.
I don’t see anyone claiming that the classic text message is a great communication medium for staying in touch. Why would they? There’s no personal gain from staying in touch with those we really have to. After all, the affirmations of friends and family appear less valued then the @ comments of a few 100 anonymous users whose opinions take less then a microsecond to compute, even less time to write and even less time to forget.
Instead we over value (or over emphasise) these tiny snippets of information or tablets of nothingness to find ways of creating and then justify soulless networks by embroidering the word social into them. And we are all connected. These are unsocial networks that expand and contract on the basis of a few basic words without any depth of meaning, shared belonging or control. Have 1,000 followers, have 1,000,000 followers. Its pyramid selling online communications, e.g. you link to me, I'll link to you, we can both link to others in our network and to infinity and beyond. In the meantime no one really knows the next door neighbour however having 100’s of facile faceless followers appears to provide currency in a virtual world where quantity most definitely beats quality.
It’s mere telemarketing for the great hoards of frustrated house wives, the unemployed, personalities (who work from home all day feeding their lovies with mindless tit-bits of information that makes everyone feel closer. I do it all for my adoring fan base "they make twitter, not me" - bucket please, I'm about to vom - to late) and businesses without the sense to acknowledge how their employees are really screwing them – pilfering is down 10% whilst sitting at a computer and adding no value is on the increase. I almost forgot the consultants that consider every emerging technology as a USP to sell their services by espousing the synergistic new business models to leverage the holistic corporate strategy (did you like that).
Is twittering a force for good? I can’t see any value. The great claim that it may provide unique services for the third world, war torn countries, emergencies such natural disasters etc takes away from the mobile and geospatial technologies already available and being deployed in a planned and not chaotic fashion.
Twitter is of no value, offers nothing new, provides no greater technology cohesion than existing services and has not improved communications or social networking if such a concept exists across the Interweb.
Lastly, 90% of twitter users sit behind their armchairs thinking of what to write rather than having anything to write about, struggling to compose 250 characters to summarise a mundane moment. But hey, its all good and like the old saying goes, "there's someone special out there for everyone, no matter who you are" or what you choose to twitter.
This isn't a step forwards or backwards - at best micro blogging has wondered off to the side!
