Twittering your life away

It would seem I am one of the increasingly few who ‘does not get’ Twitter. So much so that it actively pisses me off.

In case you’re somehow not aware of the ongoing Twitterlution, as it’s probably already being called, one uses Twitter as a sort of sterile receptacle in which to deposit meaningless opinions, descriptions of ones breakfast and hyperlinks to social media articles which extol the virtues of Twittering itself. Updates, or tweets as they’re affectionately known, are limited to 140 characters or fewer, so unless you’re very clever it’s almost impossible to say anything more worthwhile than “Doing a poo.” Why one would use it is very unclear, and the Why? page doesn’t really help (I’d suggest “How about a phone call” for each of the three reasons it gives). It’s all very Web 2.0, darling. Whatever that means. It’s blogging, which I’m very much against anyway, but without the necessary capacity to get to the point.

Once you’ve signed up for Twitter and begun writing your own stream of self-indulgence, fans of yours can spend their lives staring at live updates of your most trivial thoughts and anecdotes, and you likewise can show your interest in the tedium of their existences by clicking a button creepily marked “Follow”. It’s basically a terse Facebook without pictures, applications, videos, profiles, groups, networks, events, poking or privacy. But at least it replaces the assumption of friendship with more of a realistic stalker-ish curiosity.

Another way of thinking of Twitter is that it is a phone stuck in an eternal conference call, and you can shout into it all you want but nobody you care about will ever acknowledge you, and the only memorable interaction you’ll get from it is Stephen Fry perpetually telling you what sort of network signal his mobile phone has at any given moment.

Indeed, there are hundreds of twitterlebrities (again, probable Vocab 2.0), and if you want to know what him off of Big Brother 2004 thinks of quantitative easing or where the 2004 Olympic Pole Vault bronze medallist is going to be tonight then it’s probably an invaluable resource. All you have to do is ‘follow’ them. Twitter really is the acceptable face of celebrity-stalking.

Essentially, Twitter is for people with identity issues, and Stephen Fry. And interestingly, ‘Following’ Stephen Fry appears to be the first rule of Twitter, as at the last count there were about eight people who don’t, and that’s simply due to an overdeveloped non-conformity gland. And whilst this isn’t a bad first rule to have, it is unfortunate that it’s not the third rule, behind 1. Do not talk about Twitter and 2. DO NOT talk about Twitter.

Because this is my main problem with the twitterverse. I’m genuinely pleased that the diversity of humanity is such that there are people who can take joy from, and perhaps even base their lives around, something which for me seems almost pointless narcissism. I’m happy that people are willing to read about each other’s complex stories, problems, thoughts and hopes as long as they’re summarised in a barking missive slightly shorter than a text message. I really am. But I don’t want to be told about it all the fucking time. In this way it’s rather like organised religion.

Twitter is not Serious Business. It is simply a way of telling the internet things it doesn’t care about. And yet it seems to be seeping imperceptibly into the portion of life that is slightly more important than what you had for breakfast. US Congressmen were twittering during Obama’s not-quite-a State of the Union address. Basketball players have been twittering during half-time. There is an official website that aggregates the tweets of our politicians, and hundreds of them are doing it in order to appear ‘in touch’, rather revealing their crippling insecurity. There is a danger this could start being considered electorate interaction. This morning, whilst reading an article longer than 140 characters about business practice, I came across a sentence that ended “…fit into my overall tweeting strategy” and I threw up, right there.

The only legitimate reason I can see for Twitter are a) for real-time updates from those caught up in breaking news stories, such as happened during the Mumbai attacks last November, and b) as a promotional tool for more significant content – see the Twitter account of The Economist, for example. But there are far better ways to follow news.

Perhaps I’m simply envious that I have not caught the bug – and it really does seem like an illness – but I’m happy for Twitter to remain a shaded novelty for those without a strong sense of identity, a fad that will soon be replaced with something else, no doubt shortly after being purchased by News Corporation. What I don’t like is that it’s becoming increasingly mainstream and almost thinks it’s important. Life is bigger than 140 characters. And you should shut up about Twitter.