Wednesday, April 29, 2009
You Twit
I'm now on Twitter. Have been for a few months, actually. It's stupid. That's all you need to know.
However, Twitter mania is sweeping the nation and we're more and more looking like sheep for how we all flock to the same things. Celebs use Twitter! We better use it, too! I'll be just like John Mayer and we'll be "friends"!
No, you won't.
One of the fastest-growing age groups to use Twitter is the over 40 crowd. You know why? Because they (think they) can understand it. It's uber-simple. 140 characters. That's all. You know the status update part of Facebook? That's all Twitter is. Just that. Nothing else. No pictures, no sharing, nothing. Just stream-of-consciousness babble.
Sure, if you're utterly hilarious, your Twitter stream will be interesting and entertaining. And some people are just that. But they're diamonds in the rough. Most people, including the famous ones, are pedestrian and boring. And those who use Twitter to schill a product or themselves? Ugh. Go away.
One thing I've maintained for a while is that Facebook -- and now Twitter -- draw attention to people's ability to be creative, interesting, funny, thoughtful, etc. And if you're not any of those things, social media exacerbates it. If you're not very funny, you can probably hide that in regular social circles. But on a site like Facebook or Twitter, you're fully exposed. Things move fast, and to be funny/entertaining, you need to have new material all the time. Recycling those jokes you read in this month's Playboy just won't do. You need to be clever and you need to be quick on your feet. If you're not very bright, have zero mastery of the English language, or type like you've got a pirate hook instead of a hand, you're going to look dumb.
Going back to Twitter, though... it's not set up in a way that facilitates easy communication. The reason people love Facebook is because you can easily track multiple conversations and anyone who wants to read up on the comment stream can easily do so. On Twitter, you need to search for the comment responses. And if you're "following" a bunch of people/entities and don't get on Twitter for a few hours, those responses/comments get buried way down the page. Everything on Twitter comes to you in a single stream -- this is infuriating and illogical. Of course, it's "easier" for the old folks in the sense that they just have one place to go rather than multiple pages to click through like on Facebook. Easy as FB is to navigate, it's confounding to someone in my mom's Internet skill zone.
But the older generations are convinced that Twitter is "what the kids are doing." That's why college football coaches are Twittering and why senior-level people at all sorts of companies are incredibly impressed with themselves because they're Twittering with the other hipsters. Or so they think.
The other thing I've decided about Twitter is that it's ideal for people who are self-impressed. If you're one of those people who loves to just talk and not really listen to anyone else... well, then you'll love it. Go start Twittering. Because it's basically the equivalent of 75 million people standing on hills with megaphones shouting things. If you specifically want to hear one of them, you can strain to do so... but it's hard and I know I lose interest fast. But if you're just up for shouting things out and being "followed," well, it's the site for you.
And while I still think Facebook is dumb in general, it's got its redeeming qualities -- especially as compared to Twitter. Leaving aside the romantic notion of "reconnecting" with old friends (as I've said before, 95% of these reconnections are with people I never had any interest in connecting with in the first place), it allows people with my kind of sense of humor endless opportunities to make others laugh, or to at least entertain them. I see it as my goal in life to make friends of mine laugh -- or to bust their balls to entertain myself and anyone else watching. Facebook offers this. I view FB as the equivalent of all of us hanging out in a friend's basement, drinking beer and harrassing one another. As I said to a friend of mine, it's like being on the golf course with your buddies, ripping each other every chance you get. Ideally, in a good-natured way.
Naturally, this leads to hateful comments, as there are endless limp-wristers out there who have loads of Internet courage. Facebook was an awful place to be last year during the Presidential campaigns. And certain topics will still evoke angry, intolerant comment streams. But that's life and it goes hand-in-hand with FB. People are knee-jerk reactionaries in many cases, and when all it takes to react is to click and type, people will do that and feel better instantly. So be it.
Twitter will flame out soon enough. It's growing in a suddenly exponential way and it has pretty much already jumped the shark. Sportscenter is Twittering, for example. Come on. The unique nature of it is gone. It gets talked about in celebrity magazines and we're supposed to be impressed that Ashton Kutcher, who has yet to say anything interesting from what I've heard, reached a million "followers" first. Who cares?
Obviously, I'm not trying to be a wet blanket. If you enjoy Twitter, go for it. I think that's what's important here. But the next time someone tells you something like how Twitter is "going to revolutionize how we communicate" (I seriously heard someone say this recently), you should point out that it's not really any different than hitting "reply all" on an email with everybody in the world copied.
However, Twitter mania is sweeping the nation and we're more and more looking like sheep for how we all flock to the same things. Celebs use Twitter! We better use it, too! I'll be just like John Mayer and we'll be "friends"!
No, you won't.
One of the fastest-growing age groups to use Twitter is the over 40 crowd. You know why? Because they (think they) can understand it. It's uber-simple. 140 characters. That's all. You know the status update part of Facebook? That's all Twitter is. Just that. Nothing else. No pictures, no sharing, nothing. Just stream-of-consciousness babble.
Sure, if you're utterly hilarious, your Twitter stream will be interesting and entertaining. And some people are just that. But they're diamonds in the rough. Most people, including the famous ones, are pedestrian and boring. And those who use Twitter to schill a product or themselves? Ugh. Go away.
One thing I've maintained for a while is that Facebook -- and now Twitter -- draw attention to people's ability to be creative, interesting, funny, thoughtful, etc. And if you're not any of those things, social media exacerbates it. If you're not very funny, you can probably hide that in regular social circles. But on a site like Facebook or Twitter, you're fully exposed. Things move fast, and to be funny/entertaining, you need to have new material all the time. Recycling those jokes you read in this month's Playboy just won't do. You need to be clever and you need to be quick on your feet. If you're not very bright, have zero mastery of the English language, or type like you've got a pirate hook instead of a hand, you're going to look dumb.
Going back to Twitter, though... it's not set up in a way that facilitates easy communication. The reason people love Facebook is because you can easily track multiple conversations and anyone who wants to read up on the comment stream can easily do so. On Twitter, you need to search for the comment responses. And if you're "following" a bunch of people/entities and don't get on Twitter for a few hours, those responses/comments get buried way down the page. Everything on Twitter comes to you in a single stream -- this is infuriating and illogical. Of course, it's "easier" for the old folks in the sense that they just have one place to go rather than multiple pages to click through like on Facebook. Easy as FB is to navigate, it's confounding to someone in my mom's Internet skill zone.
But the older generations are convinced that Twitter is "what the kids are doing." That's why college football coaches are Twittering and why senior-level people at all sorts of companies are incredibly impressed with themselves because they're Twittering with the other hipsters. Or so they think.
The other thing I've decided about Twitter is that it's ideal for people who are self-impressed. If you're one of those people who loves to just talk and not really listen to anyone else... well, then you'll love it. Go start Twittering. Because it's basically the equivalent of 75 million people standing on hills with megaphones shouting things. If you specifically want to hear one of them, you can strain to do so... but it's hard and I know I lose interest fast. But if you're just up for shouting things out and being "followed," well, it's the site for you.
And while I still think Facebook is dumb in general, it's got its redeeming qualities -- especially as compared to Twitter. Leaving aside the romantic notion of "reconnecting" with old friends (as I've said before, 95% of these reconnections are with people I never had any interest in connecting with in the first place), it allows people with my kind of sense of humor endless opportunities to make others laugh, or to at least entertain them. I see it as my goal in life to make friends of mine laugh -- or to bust their balls to entertain myself and anyone else watching. Facebook offers this. I view FB as the equivalent of all of us hanging out in a friend's basement, drinking beer and harrassing one another. As I said to a friend of mine, it's like being on the golf course with your buddies, ripping each other every chance you get. Ideally, in a good-natured way.
Naturally, this leads to hateful comments, as there are endless limp-wristers out there who have loads of Internet courage. Facebook was an awful place to be last year during the Presidential campaigns. And certain topics will still evoke angry, intolerant comment streams. But that's life and it goes hand-in-hand with FB. People are knee-jerk reactionaries in many cases, and when all it takes to react is to click and type, people will do that and feel better instantly. So be it.
Twitter will flame out soon enough. It's growing in a suddenly exponential way and it has pretty much already jumped the shark. Sportscenter is Twittering, for example. Come on. The unique nature of it is gone. It gets talked about in celebrity magazines and we're supposed to be impressed that Ashton Kutcher, who has yet to say anything interesting from what I've heard, reached a million "followers" first. Who cares?
Obviously, I'm not trying to be a wet blanket. If you enjoy Twitter, go for it. I think that's what's important here. But the next time someone tells you something like how Twitter is "going to revolutionize how we communicate" (I seriously heard someone say this recently), you should point out that it's not really any different than hitting "reply all" on an email with everybody in the world copied.
