Twitter

Posted by Chris Campbell at Wednesday, March 04, 2009

It seems you can't turn on the tv, read an article or login to Facebook without seeing something related to Twitter. I have no idea what RT means but everyone seems to be doing it. And then there are the @ symbols, which I assume connotes someone's Twitter handle, although I'm sure "handle" is not Twitter enough.

I will be the first to admit that I spend far too much time on many of these mind-numbing sites. I gave up MySpace about a year ago and have since fallen face-first into the Facebook bandwagon. It truly is an obsession for many, and at times, I feel like I'm one of them. Whenever I should be focusing on the tasks of the day, I often find myself scouring photos, many of which were uploaded by people I barely know. This is depressing. And when I'm not on Facebook, you can find me on ESPN, Techcrunch and a slew of other sites that offer up instantaneous feeds. Sometimes it's hard to break free. Thankfully, I balance visits to these sites with sites that offer much more than a momentary high.

And now there's Twitter. I created an account maybe six months ago when I was working in the space. I think I tossed up two or three boring updates at the outset but haven't gone back since. Although I thought there was no limit to how far I could go with this web 2.4 garbage, I guess I've hit a wall. Time could change my opinions on this, but Twitter absolutely drives me nuts. It's just one more means of diluting dialogue and in-depth thinking. Oh, I know that sounds incredibly pretentious, but there's little nuance or curiosity; it does little more than spit out nuggets of oftentimes meaningless and thoughtless nonsense. It's like the Bush years all over again. I'm not going to travel the predictable and say, "I don't need to hear about what you're having for lunch," because there are obviously people who do care what you're having for lunch. What unnerves me about this is what I've mentioned above. We now live in a country and world that's moving too fast. People are generally never anywhere because they're always looking ahead or updating pages or making plans. Those plans never lead to being in the moment; they're simply stop gaps to what's next.

Let's relax, folks. Oh, I completely understand the lure of Twitter and the like, but enough already. We live amongst parks, people, oceans, record stores, libraries, cafes, deserts, and so forth. Let's enjoy these things based solely on what they are.

I give it three months before I'm updating multiple times an hour.