Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Here is Why I Can't Abide Micro-Blogging

Listen: I’m not about to pretend to be on the cutting edge of anything these days, because keeping on top of the internet is like trying to build a sandcastle in a tsunami, so when micro-blogging started existing (and eventually became more prevalent) I really didn’t take much notice for a number of reasons:

  1. I am not a guy with an enormous number of internet-only contacts, and even fewer internet-savvy-internet-only contacts
  2. I am not that interesting
  3. I don’t have the kind of self-worth that allows for me to write down every small thing I have done in a day with the expectation that the world gives a god damn about it
  4. I have a decent attention span and a pretty firm grasp on the written language, and as such have graduated to paragraph form (most of the time) for things I feel worth writing and sharing
  5. I am not a 12 year-old

Ok so, issue resolved, right? No, not right. For awhile the existence of sites like twitter were of no concern to me - I did not use them, and I did not know anybody dumb enough to hassle me to use them, and so we went along respectfully ignoring one another. But then Facebook, a site in a sort of steady state of information-overload-collapse, started integrating with these micro-blogging sons of bitches. Before you get on my case about anything, I’m well aware that the status-update field on Facebook was oft-abused before this integration, and that people were already capable of using this feature for dumb purposes at essentially any moment with mobile integration, but the truth of the matter is that this was usually too complicated for dumb people to set up, so it wasn’t a problem.

Now, however, it is kind of a problem. Anytime I sign onto the aforementioned social networking site I am faced with a fair number of people twittering about their terrible minutia. I realize that I am not forced to read this, and that I can adjust settings in order to cut down on this garbage, but what really bothers me is not that this technology exists (I am sure there are valid uses for it somewhere, somehow) it’s that people use it for the dumbest reasons possible. The fact that some of the people I am friends with are the perpetrators of such internet bullshit calls into question the decisions I’ve made in terms of the company I keep (digital or otherwise) becuase it is not easy to get onto my reasonably short list of contacts.

Here, let’s look at some of the information I’ve been given in the last few days (despite not requesting it) about people I kind of know:

Kelly is twittering: finally rolling out of bed... hooray, 12 hours of sleep!
11:50am

Jon is twittering: Cereal supplies running low. Next at-work breakfast: back to Pop Tarts.
12:13pm
Jon is twittering: BTW, I think I've finally found the correct size boxer briefs from H&M, which took longer than you'd think.
12:52pm

Robert is twittering: Quick shower and off to work.
3:14pm


This isn’t news. This isn’t interesting. This isn’t Funny. This isn’t anything.

Here, for the sake of argument, is how I might do a micro-blog post about what I'm currently up to:

Miles is Twittering: I can't hang out with my friends right now because they're watching Desperate Housewives in the other room and I am the last man on earth with a beating heart and honest Standards.
Was that a lot of fun? Did you enjoy reading a sentence about exactly what situation I found myself in? You better not have, because if that is the case then you have not been paying attention.
Please Stop it.
You’re Welcome
Now you Know.

[edit/p.s.]

Weirdly enough (and I hate to be the guy who tells you this) Penny Arcade and I are really on the same wavelength as far as this matter is concerned.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/25/twitter.buck/index.html

Maybe this will make you think differently.

Miles D said...

I never said it didn't have a purpose, This makes a lot of sense to me. What the article does not mention is that his next few posts after "arrested" were "windows here are small," "just met Jeff, guy in cell with me," "Jeff bites his nails - gross!"