Twitterpated!

Interesting article in the NY Times magazine this past weekend about the rise of Facebook and Twitter and that type of "Internet 2" stuff that ancient fogies like myself don't understand.

It almost made me see the appeal. Almost.

Apparently, signing onto these things lets you construct your own online identity. Okay, I knew that part of it but I just don't care about having much of an online identity. This is fine for old folk like me, but the article makes the point that for kids today an online identity is not optional. You will have one because most people you know will have one and if you don't participate, they construct yours for you in your absence. So I can see the appeal of the minimal policing of these things to make sure you're not being unfairly characterized by others.

But then there's Twitter. Twitter, if you're like me and only very passingly aware of it, is a service that lets you send out little "tweets", short text-message length updates on you: what you're doing, how you're feeling, what you're seeing, whatever. The article does a good job of explaining why one might want to watch a feed of these "tweets" from someone: it adds up, over time, to a good sense of their life. That is, the experience becomes sort of the 21st century version of the old days of being forced to live and work around the same people all of your life, you get a good sense of who they are, what they care about, how they live, etc.

The article does a less good job of explaining why on Earth someone would want to spend any part of their day texting the world that they "just made a sandwich" let alone why they would want to do it day after day*. I guess if you're getting a good buzz and sense of shared existence from reading other folks' tweets, you might develop the urge to "join the conversation" or whatnot. The article also tries to sell putting out tweets as a sort of chance to meditate on what you're doing, kind of take a meta-look at your own life. But I just can't see "I made a pastrami sandwich!" as any kind of worthwhile meditation on anything, deep as I find the cured meats to be.

So yeah. Interesting article, gave me a fleeting glimpse of insight into the world of those wacky kids whom I spend all my days yelling at to "Get off my lawn!"

*Yes, of course I am fully aware of the irony of someone who writes a blog questioning the desire of someone to shout into the ether. Perhaps these twitterers are as aware as I am that they are merely talking to themselves, as what they 'contribute' should not be read by anyone.**

** Note: I'm not actually talking about you, my loyal readers, who number somewhere between 1 and 4, given the day. You folk obviously appreciate my genius and can easily see the worthiness of my contributions here. I'm talking about all those people who don't read my fantastic rants.

Title Note: "twitterpated" is an actual word. It's a good word, one of my faves right up there with "canoodle", though unlike canoodle, you'll need a serious, serious dictionary, like the OED, to find the definition of twitterpated. Luckily, I have such a dictionary. Though not in online-linkable form, alas.