I'm never, ever twittering. Blogging takes up enough time, so this is a distraction too far.
I'm still at a loss as to what's so appealing about it. It's just like constantly updating your Facebook status isn't it? So why is that interesting for anyone, because to do it you'd have be sitting down somewhere (probably). So you couldn't, for example, say 'I'm currently swimming across Lake Geneva', because it wouldn't be possible, therefore it would be 'I've just seen an Ikea van go past my window' or something. Hardly amazing.
I wonder why people are slavishly following other people and why this is catching on so fast. It's only been about a month and it's taken off like sliced bread. Perhaps it's just a fad, a craze, like the Rubik's Cube. Or they want to be friends with a celebrity.
Can someone please explain the appeal? Does it lie in the fact that people like to be followed or they like to 'broadcast'?
Do tell.
9 comments:
It's seems like micro-gossip and small text-talk, about nothing. I expect some heavy-hitters feel obliged to maintain a Twitter presence, and can see some Zen appeal in the minimalism of it - but I certainly won't bothering - and can see twittering, spluttering and faltering in about 6 months time
I'm looking forward to this being the shortest fad ever.
Until they introduce the max two character version - for those :) and :( updates anyway...
I can see the pernicious appeal of Twitter to anyone looking for constant distractions, but I have enough constant distractions on the rest of the internet without adding this one to the pile! So I'm going to try to stay away from it.
I imagine it's a bit like Tetris: it probably worms its way into your brain so that you close your eyes at night and feel you have to fill up the little boxes with text...
I'm not having any of it - for now at least.
I like it. Nobody frogmarched me into it and it's good harmless fun and doesn't rule your life.
Makes no bloody sense to me neither. Can you imagine if half our island had been distracted by this rubbish when Hitler came knocking on the door, demanding we let his pack of jackbooted jackals in so they could piss all over our furniture? It would have been a walkover. A walkover, by the way, that would have led to these twittering fools now twittering away in German - the language of the conqueror. Doesn't bear bloody thinking about ...
At the risk of taking it far too seriously, it's splitting into various use cases
1) 'Celebs' with far too much time on their hands between official engagements, microblogging the minutiae of their (far-more-exciting-than-yours) daily lives and chatting amiably with people they know and that you admire from stage and screen. These are slavishly followed by thousands of acolytes who continue to tweet back to them, hoping desperately for the golden '@-reply' personally to them, so they can claim to have touched the hem of the cloth of the genius.
2) You and your mates arguing about football and arranging to meet for a pint on Sunday.
3) Quirky people putting standalone out-there quirky thoughts up for other quirky people to @-reply to in a quirky way.
4) Shared commentary of events (รก la Swineshead's Brits demolition)
I don't see why all of those can't happily co-exist with Facebonk and the like?
I don't need another displacement activity. But a couple of my friends are constantly on my case, trying to get me to join up. Watching how bothered they are about making the wittiest remark in the fewest characters is enough to put me off forever. This really does feel like a playground fad.
So that's settled t hen. In the main we think it's a silly fad too far and will soon pass.
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