On Twitter...

I've been contemplating a switch over to WordPress, which, coupled with job switching and technology hating, has crippled my ability to write in a blog at all. But anyways, I'm too lazy to switch to WordPress, even though I love it. I'm not particularly interested in my new job besides the computer applications' perks and in regards to the use of Twitter ( you know, overexposure of information, faulty identities, endless vanity plays ) and other 'real-time' social technologies...

Look, I already have a hard time adapting to these new toys: my Twitter is lame, I don't like what most people have to say, I don't care what most people say, my RSS feeds never work the ways I'd like and, to be honest, I still prefer picking up the New York Times on the way to work, alongside a gritty, street-cart coffee. But times are a-fuckin'-changin', right? Was that not the entire foundation of the Obama campaign? So I don't fucking understand why the media needs to incessantly [at least, unabashingly] publish worthless articles, these masturbatory inquiries into the legitimacy, necessity and luxury of Twitter, Facebook and the like. Because it looks like they're here to stay and it's up to us to adapt.

My family used to have this monstrosity of an Apple computer, back when I was way young and I got my own PC when I was eight and my first laptop when I was fourteen. Maybe the media was bitching about AIM and LiveJournal back then too, but I was unbelievably and happily absorbed into those outlets of expression. Though I emerged from high school computer capable, there turned out to be a much bigger world of Internet networking I had never discovered, which shattered my internet saavyness to the shitter and I've been recovering ever since.

I don't like that my phone has more than 12 buttons; I do love that it has buttons. I like switches and wires and e-mail and the original Facebook format. I don't like Twitter and I do think that it is a nearly perfect storm for the endless reaches of human narcissism and the-sky's-the-limit self promotion. As Alessandra Stanley noted in her recent NYT article, "...we already live in an era of me-first journalism, autobiographical blogs and first-person reportage."

It feels like you either fall into one of two camps; you use Twitter without a care or you refuse to succumb to the power of Twitter. If you can use Twitter without worrying about the psychological ramifications of untempered information sharing, good for you. But if you're like Stanley, take a look into why you refuse Twitter. Anti-Twitterers are thriving on their own version of unabashed pretention and self regard; they're just not Twittering about it. And instead, these kinda hypocrites are choosing more conventional outlets of opinion. Like, seriously?

The Internet has changed and continues to change the world and subsequently, society. I mean, come on, hasn't the media always been self-important? Isn't being a journalist, being a celebrity, being in the media, all about self indulgence? People are inherently me-first, tweeting about it just makes it public knowledge, but face it, we all knew that anyways. No one has to like Twitter, but certainly don't condescend with a line like, "There are always some people who, given the chance, will respond to anything, even nothing." Ms. Stanley, you do realize that you are in the media and you are reporting how useless Twitter is, making it clearly important enough to be in the New York Times.

I thought we were over this whole, resistant to change thing. It's one thing to simply not use it, it's quite another to bitch about it and publicly report, essentially, how awesome you are for not having an account. To be frank, the latter just makes you look like a backwards, pretentious fool.

And you'd probably feel much better about yourself with a Tweet to all your pals, instantaneously.