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The last decade or so has seen a sudden and remarkable explosion in the number of ways that people can communicate with each other without actually interacting on a personal level. I've long been convinced that the internet is largely an unhealthy medium of communication as it encourages both immediate positive reinforcement of negative behaviours ("Oh, I'm so unhappy!" *Hugs*), and self-selection of social groupings to avoid disagreement or conflict. As a rule I'm a bigger fan of interacting with people either in person or at least telephonically than by e-, and the only reason I keep an LJ these days is because I'm a frustrated standup comedian and this is a surrogate stage.
Overall, I prefer blogorrhoea to any of the other major social networking methods such as facebook or myspace as at least it encourages length and consideration in writing; the shorter the messaging space and the message contained therein, the less information is contained and the less encouragement of creativity and thought. And that brings me onto Twitter, which seems to have taken off in a big way recently. For those of you who don't know, Twitter is an instant messaging based system that allows you to update people with answers to the question "What are you doing now?" in 140 characters or less.
In short, my opinion of Twitter is this: if it is possible to summarise your life in 140 characters or less, then it is very probable that your life contains nothing worth reading about*.
Admittedly, that's not an absolute rule; if Barack Obama's next twitter was I'm just typing the launch codes into the football now then that'd at least be interesting and it'd give us time to start slapping on the factor fifty but as a general rule the less information the message contains and the more frequently it is repeated, the less interesting it is.
Psychologist Oliver James (who is, it must be admitted, something of a lefty and often writes for the Guardian so it is unwise to put much trust into anything he says) makes the point that "Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity."
“We are the most narcissistic age ever,” agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research at the University of Sussex. “Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.”
For Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety and the forthcoming The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Twitter represents “a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. It’s like when a parent goes into a child’s room to check the child is still breathing. It is a giant baby monitor.”
Not only all of that, but it's really not very interesting to read a short sentence about what you've been up to for the last five minutes. Rather than continuing to criticise, though, I'd instead set a challenge to all the people using Twitter out there - take a few days off from it and use the time you'd normally spend writing and reading Twitter to compose a short story or a longer blog post that actually says something. Not only will it be more interesting to read, but I suspect it will be more interesting for you to write.
*My summary of twitter is very nearly of twitter length itself, containing 145 characters. I find this fact rather pleasing.
Overall, I prefer blogorrhoea to any of the other major social networking methods such as facebook or myspace as at least it encourages length and consideration in writing; the shorter the messaging space and the message contained therein, the less information is contained and the less encouragement of creativity and thought. And that brings me onto Twitter, which seems to have taken off in a big way recently. For those of you who don't know, Twitter is an instant messaging based system that allows you to update people with answers to the question "What are you doing now?" in 140 characters or less.
In short, my opinion of Twitter is this: if it is possible to summarise your life in 140 characters or less, then it is very probable that your life contains nothing worth reading about*.
Admittedly, that's not an absolute rule; if Barack Obama's next twitter was I'm just typing the launch codes into the football now then that'd at least be interesting and it'd give us time to start slapping on the factor fifty but as a general rule the less information the message contains and the more frequently it is repeated, the less interesting it is.
Psychologist Oliver James (who is, it must be admitted, something of a lefty and often writes for the Guardian so it is unwise to put much trust into anything he says) makes the point that "Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity."
“We are the most narcissistic age ever,” agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research at the University of Sussex. “Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.”
For Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety and the forthcoming The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Twitter represents “a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. It’s like when a parent goes into a child’s room to check the child is still breathing. It is a giant baby monitor.”
Not only all of that, but it's really not very interesting to read a short sentence about what you've been up to for the last five minutes. Rather than continuing to criticise, though, I'd instead set a challenge to all the people using Twitter out there - take a few days off from it and use the time you'd normally spend writing and reading Twitter to compose a short story or a longer blog post that actually says something. Not only will it be more interesting to read, but I suspect it will be more interesting for you to write.
*My summary of twitter is very nearly of twitter length itself, containing 145 characters. I find this fact rather pleasing.
