This is a Rant

This is a rant about Twitter. If you love Twitter, I don't expect you to read on. That being said, here we go.


I did have a Twitter. All I was doing was following the podcast guys I listen to and a couple of celebrities. A lot the tweets I saw were ads for things these celebs support. I think I tweeted once or twice. I have a lot to say (DUH) but I can't say it all that quickly and that frequently. I practically never update my status on Facebook. I think people who update their Facebook status more than 5 times a day should definitely get themselves a Twitter. 


What is this cultural obsession with the food celebrities are eating, the places they're going, and the things they are wearing? Entire publications have been based on this phenomenon of wanting to know ever single thing about the lives of the rich and famous. Apparently People magazines once a week are not enough. Followers want info as frequently as it will come to them. This instant gratification thing has gotten way out of control.  

Twitter is a media that doesn't encourage editing oneself. It's always there on your computer or on your phone if you are not near it. It takes all of five seconds to type something and hit "send" or "enter" or "tweet this now" and then whatever you were thinking about is out there forever. That's how the whole Internet is but there's something about it being that instant.

There is a tendency in my generation to lose focus quickly. I can only imagine this tendency will continue. Twitter creators have defined tweets as "a short burst of inconsequential information," and that could potentially be useful in a situation like this:
"Iceberg ahead, send help" or "Took poison, not really dead, @Romeo"
Here are some situations in which Twitter is not really helping anyone:

“Classical music is tight yo” and “Man…whatever happened to my antique fish tank”

Those are tweets by Kanye West who, of course, is everything that is wrong with the world in his own way. I think he knows it too and plays off of that.

But anyway, I really enjoy books and readings. It’s still difficult for me to sit down and read. I get distracted and know that somewhere on the Internet, there’s an explanation that will take me 5 minutes to read. What a waste! Books are meant to be read not summarized and sliced down. I can’t imagine how literature classes go for people who don’t like to read. I can’t imagine what their life is like either. When there is news on the Internet in one page articles with a few sentences in a paragraph and summaries of everything you might not want to read, how do you allow someone to appreciate decent writing and enjoy it?

In one big run on sentence, here’s Twitter: you’ve got the instant gratification component that whatever you say it’s there for everyone, you have the over exposure of everything in your life that you choose to tweet (do I really care that your turkey sandwich was a lot better yesterday than the one you got today?), you have the constant insight into the lives of your favorite celebrity to you can further the illusion that you know them, and you have the bits of news from all outlets that translates into being well informed.

All this craziness is too much to handle. Perhaps one day I will reopen my Twitter account and use it for good. I don’t think every Twitter user is out to stupefy their followers, but I can see it happening. Do you have Twitter? What do you use it for? What are the upsides I'm totally ignoring?