As much as I agree with Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the last post, I want to needle him about one thing he said:
I don’t tweet. I’ve never twittered and tt’s not that I’m resisting it, but I see no reason to have it in my life. To reduce life to — How many? 140. — just seems to me to be a little bit simplistic. Maybe I like complexity and abstraction too much.
I beg your pardon, but a tweet is not a summation of your life and if you believe that expressions of 140 characters or less some how reduce the complexity of your life you either do not comprehend Twitter or you lead a boring life. Since he’s Captain Picard and he said that he doesn’t see a reason for Twitter, I think it’s the former.
But this sentiment is not unique to Captain Picard, I’m sure. Actually, this and one other complaint about Twitter are I think the most common I’ve heard. The other and more popular complaint about Twitter is that it’s too banal, that it encourages people to share inane and uninteresting details about their life.
I don’t know how Twitter encourages people to share boring information any more than a face-to-face conversation or any number of other forums and formats do, but I think this complaint is equally invalid as Captain Picard’s.
On one side, Twitter is overly profound (It’s a summary of your life, you know!) or it’s not profound enough. I suppose from a certain perspective it’s the same complaint worded differently and sometimes delivered with a sexy accent.
Twitter is just what it is. The users are the ones who choose what they tweet about. They can choose the mundane or the profound. They can follow people of like mind or those of contrary disposition. They can provide briefly worded insights of import or similarly brief inanities.
No, neither works to rival those of Shakespeare nor the next great American novel are going to come out of Twitter. But neither is it necessary to share or read minutiae in which you aren’t interested.
This asks the question of why I like Twitter. I like Twitter because it is brief and simple, handy. It is connected to my various social networks. It allows me to connect to people with whom I am not connected on said networks. It allows me to quickly skim the news, humor, and lives of people who interest me. It’s better than Facebook in that regard, too.
I understand if you can’t find a reason to have Twitter in your life. Perhaps you have more or less time, different interests, other areas of focus in your life. But people complain about the (lack of) profundity on Twitter often seem to deliver their complaints with a smugness that can sometimes be read as insulting. “Oh, Twitter is trite and if you use Twitter then you are trite.” So, go mind your own business. Of course, if you’d like me to share an interest in your business, I’ll look for your updates on Twitter thankyouverymuch.
Update: spelling correction
