Tweety Deconstructed 2009
From time to time, I work with a management consultant on a book about relationships. He's the author and I edit, although he generously allows me to toss in my two pennies on the content. We've hit a disagreement, though, in what constitutes a relationship. He maintains a relationship is a physical I am here and so are you relationship. I say a relationship can exist between a couple of bloggers, Tweeters, or Facebookers, one in New Jersey and one in Kathmandu.
Today, on the XX blog in Slate magazine, the subject of Twitter, Facebook and the like arose:
And so, there's now a forest of experts announcing that since the roiling dumb-butt masses can now Tweet, email, or IM at will, there's no need for the Rude Generation to do much except punch out their ur-messages of marginal interest: My mom sux. Urz 2? WTF?
As one who is more comfortable writing than speaking, I greeted email with unqualified delight, and blogging with an even bigger gush of welcome. Twitter? Not so much. The Tweeting I do is more in the spirit of experimentation, wondering WTF the big deal is in recording one's most trivial thoughts and actions. I never Tweet about my non-belief in original sin, say, or the possibilities of free will, or my fictional use of an unreliable narrator. My Tweets are always uninspired blurbs about small dull chores: Sorting my husband's sox.
Then too, every so often I get a post from some stranger announcing that they are now "following" my Tweets. Their reasons for doing so are completely opaque to me, but I will note that many of them are writers engaged in Goth, vampire and/or zombie fiction...a factoid I avoid thinking about. Their interest would seem akin to cyberstalking, except that they have no further interest in me except as another being to bombard with their specific dwarfish thoughts: Watching a True Blood rerun. How-how!
But then, Twitter-wise, maybe I just don't get it. Any day now, one of my zombie-loving-Goth-writing-graphic-novel-reading followers will surely Tweet me:
Tweeting. Ur doin it wrong.
Today, on the XX blog in Slate magazine, the subject of Twitter, Facebook and the like arose:
An Oxford neuroscientist is suggesting that social networking and the hours kids spend doing it is rewiring their brains so that we are at risk of raising a generation of solipsists. Dr. Susan Greenfield fears this exposure is permanently "infantalizing" young brains, leaving them with truncated attention spans and the inability to interact face-to-face with other human beings...The blog goes on to say: but wasn't it ever so? When TV was adopted in a mass fashion, the this-will-rot-your-brain arguments quickly switched from comic books to television, only to switch again when rock n' roll was popularized. Actually, you can trudge back through all of human history and find lots of this-will-rot-your-brain opinions. When (thanks to the Van Eyck brothers) oil painting supplanted tempera as the most widespread artistic medium, rot-your-brain groans were heard throughout Europe. Now, with oils, any dope could paint, the opinionmeisters declared. After the printing press was developed the same brand of moaning was heard: books would destroy all need for the human memory. But I think at the bottom of all rot-your-brain statements is the notion that anyone can do it, whatever the it may be. And ::poof:: goes the need for mastery or artistry. Or that enjoyable sense of superiority.
And so, there's now a forest of experts announcing that since the roiling dumb-butt masses can now Tweet, email, or IM at will, there's no need for the Rude Generation to do much except punch out their ur-messages of marginal interest: My mom sux. Urz 2? WTF?
As one who is more comfortable writing than speaking, I greeted email with unqualified delight, and blogging with an even bigger gush of welcome. Twitter? Not so much. The Tweeting I do is more in the spirit of experimentation, wondering WTF the big deal is in recording one's most trivial thoughts and actions. I never Tweet about my non-belief in original sin, say, or the possibilities of free will, or my fictional use of an unreliable narrator. My Tweets are always uninspired blurbs about small dull chores: Sorting my husband's sox.
Then too, every so often I get a post from some stranger announcing that they are now "following" my Tweets. Their reasons for doing so are completely opaque to me, but I will note that many of them are writers engaged in Goth, vampire and/or zombie fiction...a factoid I avoid thinking about. Their interest would seem akin to cyberstalking, except that they have no further interest in me except as another being to bombard with their specific dwarfish thoughts: Watching a True Blood rerun. How-how!
But then, Twitter-wise, maybe I just don't get it. Any day now, one of my zombie-loving-Goth-writing-graphic-novel-reading followers will surely Tweet me:
Tweeting. Ur doin it wrong.
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