I have signed up on Twitter, though I honestly don’t know why.
It’s a strange trend these days. People text instead of e-mail, they e-mail instead of write, and they write instead of discuss. There’s a huge inverted food-chain happening with our thoughts, dreams and ideas, where the simple, quick and relatively meaningless flotsam and jetsam streaming from your brainmeats gets first priority and top marks, while the hard work, deep thinking and heavy meanings take back seat and wait for lightning to hit or lotteries to be won.
This Blog was created in hopes I’d turn around the trend in my own life, but inevitibly as I watch more people I care about using Facebook, and more interesting uses for those little snapshots on Twitter or RSS, I can’t help but feel I’m speaking into a vaccum sometimes.
And what is a writer without an audience? A puppeteer without a stage? A painter without a gallery? A…porno star without a .com (or is it .xxx?) website?
But, I forget sometimes, that these things still have meaning. A porno star without infamous throngs of fapping fanboys is a passionate lover, skilled in their trade. A painter without a gallery is a gurrila artist and a street Picasso. A puppeteer without a stage is an entertainer and craftsman. A writer can be an audience themselves, and can feel their own life enriched by a guarded moment of self-indulgent reading.
The Twitters, Feeds, Digests, Tickers and Status Updates all still have a use in this attempt to turn things back to the right-side-up food pyramid of thought. They can do their job instead of distill and compress another task. I myself have used Facebook to post links to the Midnight Jolt Run, and will likely begin to use Twitter now to do the same. While it takes away some of the excitement of surfing a page you haven’t visited for a while and finding a treasure trove of new content, I must admit I’m not providing enough treasure at the moment to be angry and pompous about it.
So, these feeds shall become my combat drones. My little army of one guns to scour the internets for prey, while my mothership stays fat and sassy. Slow, lumbering, but undenyably shiny and cool.
My 30th year as a human is approaching. Should be a fun one. I just hope in my old geezery age I remember all the passwords, update codes, and websites being branched off of this one.
Luckily, I have computers to help me remember.
http://twitter.com/SwordOfStories
UPDATE: Dammit, I guess “Wired” already beat me to it…but here’s their version of the “Media Intake Pyramid”
Interesting thoughts. I must admit, I never really cared for twitter as a medium. There is very little that I have seen that is so fascinating that it must be instantly reported, and of that very little that can be adequately explained in 127 characters. However, as to your comments about the internet as a whole, I both agree and disagree respectfully. While we as a society have never been more connected, we have also never been further apart. The simple reason for this is that while we can share ideas, thoughts, and connects with people who we would never be able to in the real world, it cannot imitate the experience of connecting with another human being. The smell of a lover’s perfume, the laughter of a table surrounded with friends, and the true sorrow that can be conveyed in the real world cannot be replicated on the internet, no matter how hard it tries. Yet, for all these disadvantages, there are a number of advantages. Using the example you mentioned with writing, as it is a matter I have had a modicum of experience with, before the internet became widespread, becoming a writer was a very arduous process. You had to find a literary agent, get a publisher, find some way to publicize your book and hope it didn’t languish on the shelves at barnes and noble. Now, many who are talented are able to use this great resource to get their work out there. Granted, the truly bright and shining examples of literary wonder are buried beneath the sands of mediocrity, but they are out there. Society is not languishing, but rather it is evolving. Whether it is evolving into something the current generation will enjoy, or even recognize, is up in the air, but it will be seen before too long. Excellent post however, and I look forward for your future postings.
Actually, it’s 140 characters now. 🙂
So long as we…myself included…use a system correctly, it has value. When it replaces other systems and imposes limitations on the message, then that shit just aint right. Hopefully we’ll never rely on instant messaging to relay real, human experiences…only entice people to seek them out.
Using it correctly is the key, and right now, I don’t think many people do.
My problem with Twitter and Facebook is that they so easily create the illusion of communication by making it so easy to spew static. Worthless noise that tells no one anything except that someone else is out there. Yes, one can use them to say things of importance, make sure everyone knows that you just got a new job or announcing an engagement to all your friends, or to link to someplace where you wrote something meaningful, but almost everything I see is along the lines of “Good morning!” “Thank God it’s Friday!” “Man, this weather sucks.” Yes, I saw a message from you, random tweeter, but did we really connect in any meaningful way? Not even close. I have one friend who just doesn’t consider her day complete unless she’s posted a picture or two of her kids on Facebook. I see little thumbnails of those children just about every day, but I don’t know their names… and I really don’t care. It’s not a good sign.
This reminds me of something I ran into earlier this month. The Community folks for an online game I play made this big noise about following them on Twitter through Comic-Con. So I did out of curiosity, wondering what new thing was in the pipe. Instead, over the 4-day event, I got about 50 messages, most of them generic con pictures with this game developer or that cosplayer dressed as a game character, and the rest being calls for people at the con to come do Stupid Human Tricks for a prize. And at the end, they couldn’t understand my annoyance that I actually wanted them to say something of value. They were proud of their content-free coverage of the event.
Maybe I just like my internet a little harder to publish to. Someplace where it’s a bit of an effort to share something, so if you do, I can be reasonably sure you actually have something to say.
Good call. Imagine wanting to read something useful instead of just links to photobucket or facebook pictures. Some of the best uses of Twitter I’ve found (in the < 1 month so far I've used it) are: Notification of blog updates, links to new people, books and songs to check out from your favourite authors and artists, and website status and news links. Honestly, though...it's just a rebranded RSS feed. I guess "Twitter" sounds more user friendly than "RSS".
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