Twitter: say what you want, it’s idiocracy
I’m not quite old enough to be a full strength curmudgeon. Especially when it comes to technology and cyber-thingies that come down the pipe. However, I am curmudgeon light when it comes to some of the latest “innovations” that are little more than a way to shorten our attention spans and weaken our brains even more than TV, the Internet and Iphones already have.
Twitter falls into this category. Twitter is the ultimate expression of idiocracy. The only thing left is to bypass the interface and simply have instant “information” incessantly pumped straight into your (barely) firing synapses. I bring this up again because of Chad OchoCinco’s latest publicity stunt of announcing his intention to tweet during games. Forgive me if I dont’ get fired up one way or another by that revelation (which may go against league rules making it moot before it started).
Justify it any way you want, I’ve heard it all. And I remain unconvinced.
Twitter is what it is: brain twinkies.
It is useless, meaningless sugar rush for the cravings we’ve created for “instant information” and the scoop-frenzy that happens with Internet culture. In other words, everyone wants to get closer to the source and be at the moment of breaking news. Is this because there is important information being conveyed? Nope. It’s all about bragging rights, so to speak. You had the scoop because you saw the tweet the moment it hit the cyber universe.
If it sounds like I’m treading into self-righteous indignation, I’m not. I’m not above it all, to be honest. Indeed, I fell victim to one of the oft cited justifications for buying into this nonsense. And that’s what finally put me in the curmudgeon camp. Read more about my journey of disillusionment after the jump.
I was always skeptical that twitter was little more than self-gratifying broadcasting consumed by the ultimate no-life losers and celebrity worshipers. Than I listened to several things that were reported as coming from tweets. And some people are particularly adept at using this thing to contribute marginally interesting, or at least funny, content. Those people tend to be great self-promoters anyway. Shaq is a case in point. Dude manages to rip off funny and/or controversy stirring tweets now and again.
But the vast majority of tweets (how ghey is that, by the way?) are useless, inconsequential fragments of nothing.
I was finally convinced of this on the night of the NBA draft. I heard a report of NBA players giving their takes on things via twitter. Now that IS interesting…at least, it is on the face of it. I thought “this IS the immediate access that fans have been craving, I’m going to check this out.”
Instead of fresh takes or interesting insights, I got little more than PR one-liners and fragmented half-thoughts such as “Congrats to my new teammate” or “I see we took **** ******, cool.”
Riveting.
In fact, what was being tweeted wasn’t nearly as interesting as who was following some of these guys. It’s not terribly shocking that a bunch of groupies professional “friends” are stuck on these guys like the leeches that they are. But I was a little surprised to see that twitter’s greatest potential seems to be as a ho’s groupie fan’s billboard. But it makes perfect sense in the end. Just like MySpace and Craigslist devolved into showrooms for hookers, hackers and horny teens…so goes twitter IMHO.
And I say this despite some “news” agencies like ESPN and TMZ using tweets as if they are legitimate quotes that can be inserted into news stories (I’m literally laughing out loud as write this). You’d think the potential for disingenuous or simply misinformed comments would restrain so-called journalists. Not to mention the well-known fake profiles that have been created.
In the end, it’s just another “source” to scrutinize with the critical lens I’ve focused on other dubious media like wikipedia.
