You kids, with your Twitterings:
Perhaps Twitter will evolve into a form of news communication…
It has.
…especially in the developing world, where independent media outlets are rare.
Holy fuck, are you kidding me? You know, maybe one day, this whole social media thing might have an impact in the third world. Maybe in the ARAB world. In the SPRING. TMQ feels comfortable saying that verily, this may pass. See if you can beat that, Nate Silver!
Twitter and similar services seek to recapture the sensation of childhood. When you are little, your parents wanted to know everything happening to you, everyone you spend time with, everything that was said. Once you are an adult, nobody cares about daily details like where you are and what you are talking about. Twitter creates the illusion that not only does someone else care — thousands of people care! Twitter is all about the person sending the tweet, not those who receive it.
TMQ says: Why not tweet a charitable donation instead? Instead all of you are infantilized assholes who NEVER use Twitter for noble purposes. You are sickening. You are ALL children.
I think people Instagramming their food is weird. I don’t get it, like, unless it’s a thing that’s on fire like Baked Alaska or something, or a birthday cake, like why am I looking at your burrito unless it’s to feel bereaved because I have no burrito? I don’t get the food pics. When I’ve made something terribly complicated and I’m proud of it, I’ll take a picture then, but I know people who are like, I made a peanut butter sammich and here’s a photo! Just eat your damn meal. Preferably nowhere near my DAMN LAWN.
You know what, though? The Internet comes with ALL KINDS of options and ways for me to NOT look at Instagrammed food. And Instagram comes with all kinds of ways to not use its service for those purposes. For example, you canhelp the NYT document a massive snowstorm. Or otherwise use it to get your message out.
I hate this thing old people do — and fellow old people, for serious, knock it off — where we take the stupidest possible use a tool and use that use to declare the tool itself stupid. This is about as savvy as declaring hammers invalid because some people use them to hang pictures of velvet Elvises. It’s just a way to stroke ourselves, and while I’m not opposed to that in itself, to quote Easterbrook, nobody else really needs to know all about it.
A.
Easterbrook is such a self-righteous twit. I used to read his TMQ columns but found him teeth-grindingly irritating even before he was suspended (I think he was accused of anti-Semitism, or at least of stereotyping Jewish people).
Maybe in an ideal world his punishment would be to coach a perennially lousy football team that he could only communicate with via Twitter…
I’ve got to admit that I like the description of twitter as a self-absorbed child.
But is Twitter the problem or is it merely one more item where we are self-absorbed as a whole? And is criticizing Twitter some sort of psychological dodging (seeing MichaelF above I wonder if the author of the link is self_absorbed). And what is wrong with a little harmless fun?
The problem, as I see it, is how do you get rid of the noise to find the items of importance.
The link at the top is busted… 🙁
Also, Gregg Easterbrook — or, in fact, any major media pundit — complaining that Twitter is self-absorbed or infantile is like Batman complaining that some people care too much about bats.
“…where we take the stupidest possible use a tool and use that use to declare the tool itself stupid.”
This is what Easterbrookdoes, over and over, to everything. A friend of mine calls itsingle-valued logic.
Fixed the link. THAT NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU KIDS DIDN’T HAVE TWITTER.
A.
Completely agree on the food pics, though I did make an exception once, taking picture of a dinner that I had and sending it out to one person.
Why was that? Because that person paid for it…it was his birthday treat to me. A fellow I’ve known for over 20 years, who lives in Australia, so we can’t experience such dinners face to face.
I showed him what his money bought, and he liked it. 🙂
I’m not so sure it is age so much as the authoritarian joy of self righteous umbrage. Which can become addictive at a remarkably early age.
No shit.
If I’d wanted to see what you had at Applebees, I’d have gone there with you.
Tommy