The Trouble with Twitter

Published: Friday, April 10, 2009, 8:08 PM     Updated: Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 8:14 AM
I realized a couple of weeks ago that I have become irrationally intolerant of this Twitter fever that's currently gripping the nation (ugh, we've probably infected the entire world with this crap). It's everywhere: on my TV shows and favorite celebrity baby websites, in college lectures and the UK's Times Online. It's just exploded, very, very suddenly, and now you're nothing -- and not to mention a technological hillbilly, so YOU MIGHT AS WELL ORDER YOURSELF A TYPEWRITER WITH THAT SENIOR COFFEE -- if you don't have a Twitter account. (Lucky for me, I'm totally somebody: I created my Twitter account on November 2, 2007, so suck on that, nerds!)

This kinda late-in-the-game Twitter freak out is kinda like when the VP of my department at my old job clapped his hands together excitedly in a manager's meeting TWO YEARS AGO, for cryin' out loud, and announced breathlessly that blogs! Blogs are the way of the future! Blogs are our answer! Blogs are a technological marvel! Blogs are an amazing new way to communicate in a web 2.0 world (I've never seen a company so obsessed with web 2.0, btw, and I'd lay good money on the fact that half of those yahoos didn't even know what the crap web 2.0 even WAS.) Everybody must blog! And I was all "..." because...I mean...really, guy?

But yeah, everybody's losing their minds over the wondrous, amazing marvel that is Twitter and all this new stuff has cropped up and really, the whole ordeal just makes me grit my teeth in annoyance. I realize that turning into somebody's Merit-smokin', housedress-wearin', brown-Chrysler-drivin' crotchety old memaw isn't going to solve anybody's problems, but sometimes, there's just no fighting City Hall: it's pretty much my destiny, so I might as well get a head start. Now where's my lighter?

Here are the top five things that are really chapping my ... well, you know ... right now about the Twitter-lution.

1. Retweeting: Retweeting (RT) is repeating a tweet posted by someone else and, like eating anywhere that requires a sneeze-guard, I just don't do it.

RTs can be divided into two separate categories:

  • Category 1 is composed of people who RT certain entries of their own volition, independent of any outside influence -- they choose to RT because they find that particular tweet amusing or important. They're a little more bearable than Twitterers in category 2.
  • Within category 2 resides a loathsome creature whose sole purpose in life, it seems, is to beg, over and over, for your spare change within the Twitter-verse: their main goal is to get you to RT certain entries they find noteworthy -- and to make sure that sucker shows up four times in quick succession on my home page. Part of the reason why I don't RT is to avoid those kinds of situations: Birmingham's Twitter scene is so incestuous, my retweeting a particular post would inevitably be SUPER redundant and MUCHO annoying.
Really, though, I don't RT simply because of my personal philosophy: I figure if one of my "followers" (I'm not making that up, they really are called that; this isn't some Heaven's Gate-type sitch) wanted to read your posts, it would probably be in their best interest to follow you, too, and not to depend on me to relay the message like some kind of weird, 2009 version of Telephone. (I rule at that game, though. Just sayin'.)

So, in summation: I think retweeting is lame.

2. Hash Tags: I'm still a little fuzzy on just WTF a "hash tag" is; Stephen Fry, of all people, clued me in on the existence of hash tags. Logical deduction leads me to believe it functions like tags you'd typically see on a particular blog entry or Flickr photo, but with a hash mark in front of it. So I guess when you include the hash tag #hashtagssuck with a tweet, it allows fellow hash tag haters find that particular tweet easier when searching for their brethren. But I really don't know, I haven't tested the system -- or plan to. Ever.

I feel like saying "hash tag" five times in four sentences just isn't enough...

3. Follow Friday: Every Friday, people across the world scan the list of people they're following and choose to highlight the few, the proud, the equally Twitter-obsessed and let everyone know how they're now -- wait for it -- tweethearts. (Did you just throw up? Just now? 'cause I did.) Basically, Follow Friday is when you list a few people who you think are rad in a tweet to let your followers know just how awesome they are. Sometimes, this can actually be kinda cool: it's how I discovered celebs like Rainn Wilson, Eddie Izzard, and Kevin Smith. But a lot of the time, it's just sorta lame; I don't care about some live squirrel feed or your local Cairo expert.

And besides, when you follow celebs, you risk running aground on problem number 4.

4. Celebrity Twitterers: In my varied and colorful imagination (the same one that makes me jerk the shower curtain back in one swift, fluid movement in order to make the serial killer's reveal just THAT much more dramatic), I like to think that, when you're famous, your life is very relaxed and laid back and full of drinks served in coconuts with tiny little umbrellas and all the usual, cliched jazz we haul out when imagining the physical manifestation of words like "loaded" or "chick magnet" or "alligator shoes."

Most importantly, though, when you're famous, I bet your boss (wait -- do you even have a boss if you're famous?) doesn't tweak and blink and shudder with as-yet unexpressed fury when he discovers you tweeting from your cubicle for the fourth time that day, and your workplace, should you choose to enter it, is very free form and casual and you get to wear jeans all the time, and it all adds up to a lifestyle that allows you to be in constant contact with the Internet, should you choose to do so. That's my problem with most celebrity Twitterers, the fact that they tend to flood my home page with many, many -- many -- updates, and often times about the most minuscule and ridiculous things (John Mayer famously Twittered basically a full day of absurd, made-up anecdotes involving his brother, Carl, because it was Carl's birthday).

It's basically like going to your favorite coffee shop or library, to read or write or whatever other solo activities you like to take part in (that are socially acceptable, of course), only to find your fortress of solitude breached by the chatty mouthbreather at the next table, a person so heinous and unbelievable, you'd swear you were on Southwest flight #1118, a tiny puddle-jumper where your seatmate -- a wall-eyed maniac with a penchant for long walks on the beach and deep, meaningful conversations in front of the fire about Alabama football -- is given free reign to pin you to the wall with their one good eye and verbally hold you hostage for the next 45 minutes. Except that it's somebody famous who you used to love and admire, and now, you just really wanna shove a fork through their eye and be done with it.

Yeah, I'd have to say that sounds about right.

(If you wanna find more celebrities to follow, check out Celebrity Tweet -- but remember, it's YOUR funeral.)

5. Twitcher: Twictionary defines this as someone "who follows you just to get a follow back, only to dump you a day later when you don't reciprocate." These are people who follow thousands upon thousands of people for no good discernible reason: there's no real common thread, and you certainly have no interest in returning the follow (for whatever reason), but they still persist. Sometimes, they're trying to become minor Internet celebrities; others are marketing a (particularly scam-y sounding) product or idea. At any rate, I NEVER return the follow; in fact, I rarely, if ever, follow individuals who I don't know (I don't really get the point of that, other than networking). I don't CARE that some weird, random stranger bought a Segway, but I DO care a great deal that my former co-worker bought a Segway, because that increases the chance that I'll get to ride it exponentially. See the difference?

Twitter can be lots of fun: you can post from your cell phone, you can tie your Facebook status to your Twitter updates, you can download apps for your iPhone. If Timmy's trapped in a well, Lassie can let tons of people know, "Hey, geniuses, you entrusted your kid's welfare with a DOG, and now look what's happened -- I don't have thumbs! I wipe my butt on the carpet!" with a single message. I'm sure there are many more changes on Twitter's horizon -- some I'll like and some I'm pretty positive I'm gonna hate. Until the next round, though -- got a light?

Related topics: the Internets, Twitter, www

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