I'm still having trouble coming to terms with twitter. Whether this is because I'm a cantankerous old luddite (who's currently typing this on an ipad), mentally disturbed, monumentally stupid or ABSOLUTELY CORRECT remains to be seen. Yesterday, I initiated a bit of a tweetocalypse, annoying some of my followers because I had a thought longer that twitter would allow and posted about 20 tweets. I did it semi-ironically, because it's so funny to me how hostile the service is to big words and long thoughts. My cantankerous side says I find no value in the service as a series of short, disconnected trivia statements, but that's not entirely true. I enjoy reading a few tweets, from people it seems more awkward to talk to in real life. I feel like I understand them better.
But part of me just rankles at the idea of a service aimed at minimizing self-expression. It's actually rude to have thoughts longer than 140 char. I was reminded twice that the "thing to do" is write a long blog post and then post a link to twitter, which also rankles for reasons that aren't clear to me (and which I won't be doing with this post, because fuck twitter today). I think it just offends me to have social networks that stifle self-expression, and big words, and long thoughts, in fact make it socially rude to do that. For one, it reminds me of church, which I am an unreasonable ogre about nowadays, and for two, I have the strong feeling that what our society needs is LESS emphasis on the trivial, shallow, and mundane. My suspicion is that twitter and facebook are not suitable replacements for personal interaction. Twitter is too short for nuance (and in fact the amount of tweets needed to add nuance apparently burns users with unholy fire), and facebook just naturally devolves to the trivial, because if you post anything approaching an opinion it just starts arguments.
I'm going to keep using twitter I suppose. I get enough out of the people I follow that it has marginal utility for now. But I will continue to be offended that more than a few tweets is faux pas. "Express yourself, but not too much." is really not a guiding philosophy I can get behind. It's the type of social pressure I've been trying to escape my whole damn life.
I think of Twitter like open-mic night. You've got everyone in one room chilling, but only one microphone. When you've said your piece, you sit down and listen to everyone else. But if someone hogs the microphone, that means someone else isn't being heard. Continuing the already stretched analogy, there's nothing stopping you from giving a brief synopsis of something and then going off into a quiet corner to chat more with people who are interested. Assuming everyone is interested in everything you say to me is the social
ReplyDelete