There are so many riddles in this life…mysteries of the cosmos, random acts seemingly without purpose (e.g., Coke Zero, that thing that hangs down in the back of your throat, ‘Smart’ cars, any joke ever told by Leno, etc,). Currently, the most baffling thing to me is Twitter - I don’t understand ‘following’, ‘followers’, ‘Tweets’, Ashton Kutcher or the point.
My Twitter disconnect may be driven, in part, by the fact that I recently setup a Twitter account and froze-up before I could get my first ‘Tweet’ out. Obviously, I don’t have a problem blogging, but when it comes to sending the world a message regarding my activities ‘right now’ – I freeze. It’s like the curtain comes up, the warm spotlight hits my face, and I just hear feedback from the microphone…followed by a guy coughing in the back row. I stare at my blinking cursor and realize I don’t even know what I am actually doing at that moment. Strange.
I finally sent one Tweet out, entitled ‘test’ – not, ‘my test results are in’ or ‘I am getting testy over this’, just ‘test’. So funny enough, I have ‘followers’ as a result…I have no idea how, or why, or even whether I have met them. For example, I know a girl named Giselle in Illinois is following me…do I owe her money? I keep looking over my shoulder to see if a woman in an Illini sweatshirt is positioned strategically behind a mailbox or peeking over a garbage can… following me. It’s unsettling to have ‘followers’ – I understand subscribing to a blog but don’t ‘follow’ me. That said, I guess it’s better than having ‘watchers’, watching me.
The bottom line is this – nobody, really, is that interesting and, more importantly… nobody really cares that you just bought a latte’ or finished your workout. In my struggles to understand this torturous new bit of techno-communicato, I did manage to identify a few examples of what ‘may’ be considered worthy of a Tweet:
- Tweet right as you rush the President’s motorcade with your son’s orange plastic pistol. I want to know how you feel and what's happening RIGHT THEN.
- Tweet as you push a briefcase full of flour across the table to seven stoic, heavily armed, Russian gentlemen. Once you take their cash and they open it…Tweet, so I know how you feel and what’s happening RIGHT THEN.
- Tweet as your children under the age of 7 watch the Thriller video for the first time.
In the end, the fact that over one million people follow Ashton Kutcher’s Tweets each day is, I believe, one of the signs that the apocalypse is near. Forget the Mayan calendar’s projections for 2012, as well as, the cloud of locusts in your backyard – be afraid that we care, as a collective, what A..s..h..t..o..n… K..u..t..c..h..e..r is doing RIGHT NOW. I am off to buy a latte’.
Hope you liked your latte'... Just tried to add your blog to my Reader. Something's wrong with your feed. I'll come back later.
Posted by: Chris | 10/23/2009 at 02:50 PM