I wonder about things. I wonder why I need so many half consumed jars of jam. I wonder why the rise of the internet, the economic bubble and its bursting are all related. I wonder why no one seems to notice that. And I wonder why Twitter is taking off, jumping the shark and about to become (in Mr. James's words or - better - something like them) the usenet of the 2010's. Remember usenet? It was so great. People being all Web 2.0 a decade and more before Web 2.0? Now people are being all 25% usenet fifteen years or more later. What is up?
Anyway, being ticked that the Whitehouse apparently really really discovered Twitter last night and finding 30 or so of the last 50 posts I had to wade through were about policy and Obama girls, I deleted that feed. I have been spending much of my Twitter time in the last two weeks deleting feeds. I even had a show trial of a brewer whose pace of twitting was far too manic. I bet that really stung. Being unhappy with Twitter has given rise to a few observations which I trust you will confirm in their entirety:
- People consider the haiku moment of Twitter to be the restriction to 140 characters. I would prefer 50 characters myself. I had no idea that people could actually go on with only 140 units at their disposal.
- Twitter is now full of spam. Twitter spam is of two sorts:repeating the posts of others when any one with any sense would plagiarizer a good idea and straight up commercial blabbery. Are people now so accustomed to spam that they don't notice it is spam?
- A more annoying constraint is the limit to the number of posts I can view meaning that a twitting blabber mouth can monopolize your view screen. I say view screen as it is a more accurate 1964 way of describing the screen you view. For you stuck in the 90s please refer to the GUI. If you post more than 4 times a day, you are cluttering your readers' view screens.
- There is something really really sad about news media discussing Twitter. But it might equally be said that it is very sad when bloggers write about Twitter.
- Twitter is incredibly anti-social for social software. It is entirely isolating, insulating and, if one were hooked, immersing. Stephen Fry may well be playing out his addiction in public and one wonders what it means to "follow" 55,243 feeds. Surely, the format is simply broken at that point.
So, is Twitter the widget that is so simple yet dysfunctional that no one actually has to admit it does not really work except as a Borg training device?. And why is it so apt for people in the time of recession? What does it speak to in a time of doubt and uncertainty? Is it like Depression-era eating goldfish or dancing non-stop contests without a prize?
Comments
Seanie - March 25, 2009 10:47 am
I keep trying to like Twitter... I even tried to replace FaceBleech with it, but found out that the vast majority of my "friends" on FaceBook do not twitter, and only the ones I converse with here, on other blogs and by email do.. so swapping over to twitter is just adding another piece of lettuce to my currently not that unappealing social sandwich.
My Blog: secretive, boring and tumbleweedish
Facebook: full of people I do not wish to talk to but feel guilty truncating
Twitter: kind of, well, lame.
Myspace: ugh
I want to eliminate the internet for personal social use and go back to one person at a time dial-up BBS's. I met my wife on one, they cannot therefore be all that bad.
Hans - March 25, 2009 10:57 am
"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." -- Macbeth
Una - March 25, 2009 11:30 am
I don't know twitter, but there seems to be a nice metaphor between your take on twitter and the half consumed jars of jam. Is it a lack of discipline to open more than 2 jars of jam?
seanie - March 25, 2009 11:34 am
Only if it is two jars of the same type jam.
Una - March 25, 2009 11:47 am
Really? I'm more of a fridge-fascist than I thought. I permit 2, one jam, one marmalade.
Alan - March 25, 2009 11:51 am
But what sort of marmalade? I just got lime. And there is Seville orange as well as others. I can't be expected to be boxed in about that sort of thing. But I also have 12 mustards and 27 BBQ sauces on the go in the fridge.
Seanie - March 25, 2009 12:01 pm
We aren't a jam family, but I have many, many opened bottles of barbecue sauces and hot sauces (which pretty much all taste the same ..hrmm). Not quite 27 though. Maybe 4 mustards.
Una - March 25, 2009 1:03 pm
Oh no. I really may be odd about this. Just ginger marmalade. The no more than 2 rule is enforced with a fairly iron grip. One jam at a time. I make all my own BBQ sauces, so none of those either. If you like BBQ sauces, the Great BBQ Companion, Secrets of the Pitmaster and the BBQ Bible by Paul Kirk have great sauces and no jars.
Ben (The Tiger) - March 25, 2009 1:54 pm
Twitter is silly.
Chris Taylor - March 25, 2009 6:13 pm
My fridge is one of those Star Trek planets-of-the-week where things appear to be a libertine paradise—with the important plot-producing addendum that the one or two coded infractions carry capital punishments.
We have three different jars of pickles, a half dozen assortment of cheeses, several varieties of deli meats, and usually two different kinds of bacon. They proliferate rather freely and only get culled if they are still hanging around past the best-before date.
We have about three jars of opened jams roaming the shelves, down from a high of five. Wanda voluntarily culled two from the herd before I got wind of it.
Similarly we had six opened salad dressings grazing the vast plateaus of the door, which is a ridiculous number for two people. I instituted a two-per-person rule on the spot and the rest won a trip to the fabulous glittering chrome starship which transports them to a new world free of all their old problems.
Regarding Twitter, I tried hard to like it but there is just not that much useful information that gets passed on in 140 characters. Everybody I read on Twitter also has a blog or RSS feed, and generally posts better stuff there.
Seanie - March 25, 2009 9:36 pm
Salad dressings. I forgot about those. We have....8. And I use one of them.
Jay Currie - March 26, 2009 2:30 am
I blame Costco (and Bush, of course). Our own fridge features three jams, a necessary jar of Robertsons and some twee rindless French marmalade which reminds me of Smuckers. Cheeses, several, deli meats, yup: bacon?! No bacon has ever lasted past one breakfast at chez Currie. My sweetie, just for fun bought 2 1/2 pounds of lovely butcher bacon a couple of weeks ago intending, foolish girl, to do Saturday and Sunday. The boys and I made short work of it.
Salad dressing - make our own. (Try making your own Ranch or Thousand Island and you will never again buy the stuff.) BBQ sauce, make our own. No hot sauce other than tabasco. A couple of jars of homemade pasta sauce and, at the moment, a lovely jar of homemade pesto.
I tweeted for a bit. Got bored. Tweet seldom.
I have yet to laugh at an actual tweet per se. I usually laugh when I come to Alan's. Each takes about the same amount of time: one is rewarding.
Chris Taylor - March 26, 2009 5:57 am
Here is the LA Times list of 25 must-follow twitterers.
There's exactly one fellow on that list who isn't a cork-brained addle pate: Christopher Walken. His tweets actually look interesting.
For everyone else I should be glad to fork out a tuppence to avoid their daily proclamations.
Seanie - March 26, 2009 12:59 pm
Bacon? My boys and I are heathens at my home in the eyes of my wife. We prefer Chicken Bacon or Turkey Bacon to the real thing. She complains ever time we microwave some (the preferred cooking method), prattling on about a "pigs purpose on earth is to be slaughtered, saalted and thereby make people happy on weekends" or something like that.
Jay Currie - March 26, 2009 6:18 pm
Seani, it's not just your wife....
olllllo - April 10, 2009 1:52 pm
Couldn't most of this discussion occur on twitter? I can't be bothered to keep clicking back to this page. #twiiter #jam #condiments ;)