Twitter

I don't want to tweet. It's like pissing off a cliff in the dark. No one sees it and you risk getting yourself wet. At best, you screw up and become a pariah. Which is why Twitter is a sea of dropouts and the fawning press trumpeting its IPO doesn't realize that sites built upon the backs of users are fads. In other words, you're better off buying Apple, unless you're a Wall Street pro who buys low and gets out early.

How did it come to this?

Like every fad, once upon a time Twitter was cool. You know how it works, you hear about something from your hipster friends, you say you don't need it but eventually you dive in, love it and then abandon it. Come on, how often do you update your Facebook page now?

Furthermore, those who fan the flames of cool, the young 'uns, are always on the hunt for the latest and the greatest, moving on to new social networks their parents are unaware of, only to abandon them when they fall out of favor, or when everybody else is there, or lose their cred.

Do we need a real time news service? One in which we can learn the comings and goings of those we're interested in and facts from the street from the millions of reporters that the traditional media industry cannot provide?

Yes.

So you'll find out the world ended first on Twitter.

But you won't get any analysis. That's hard to do in 140 characters.

You might even find out your favorite singer got hitched or busted or smashed his or her car in a DUI.

But do we really want to know the comings and goings of everyday people?

No.

Call it the blockbuster mentality. We're not interested in what most people do, only a few.

Remember when every day your inbox was cluttered with a joke? I haven't gotten one in years. Because people were thrilled they could connect with old friends from around the world, but they really didn't have much to say past the initial greeting, so they sent jokes. But now everybody expects to be in contact with everybody they ever knew all the time. So there are no jokes. E-mail is for business. Maybe personal, but people complain when their inbox is being cluttered.

Facebook was cool for a minute because you could hook up with those you'd lost touch with and burnish your own self-image, trying to tell your high school buddies you'd won. But then you realized that once you graduated, no one really cared. As a result, it's only a hard core who are Facebooking today.

And there's only a hard core who are tweeting.

I've about given up. Because unless I reach deep down inside, try to be witty and viral all the time, unless I consider it my job, almost nothing I have to say will be seen by almost anybody, and it's just too frustrating to continue. So I've dropped out. And so have so many others. Oh, we've still got Albert Brooks and Kelly Oxford, but so many I used to follow have gone silent.

To be replaced by newbies with even less to say. Who believe if they just keep tweeting something good will happen to them. But we've already forgotten about the kings and queens of MySpace. And if you're not frustrated with counter games, you're not playing.

You know what I mean... How many friends do you have? How many likes? How many followers? I mean I competed in high school to get into a good college, grade-grubbing all the way. I gave that up when I got to Middlebury, you want me to play that game again now?

Yup, if I've got a low count I'm nobody and there's always someone with more followers. Either I can stay up at night dreaming how to raise my count or I can get frustrated and leave the arena. Because Twitter followers are like virtual badges, they're ultimately meaningless. You stop playing that video game, the slate is wiped clean. It's not like being the king of Twitter pays.

And so many of the tweets are personal preference. Everybody in America is lonely and looking to be important. They believe someone is interested in their travails when the truth is we all live in silos, unless you're truly famous, which comes with its own set of downsides.

And the news people are trumpeting this stuff you can live without. Links to some blog or videoclip done by some hack with no impact. Or else it's the same viral sensation you're already aware of, like that video about the fox. And then the mainstream media hypes the same damn thing making like it's important when it's truly not.

But don't get me started on viral videos. Used to be if you had 700,000 views I was wowed. Then a couple million. Today if you don't have ten million views of your video I'm shrugging my shoulders. You're just a drop in the ocean. The standards have risen.

That's what's happened all over the world. The exceptional have won and those below just can't. It's just like income inequality. But since too many people can't work or are underemployed they believe if they win in one of these fake games online, like Twitter, then their lives will be worth living.

Yes, Twitter is the new reality TV, only with a lot fewer viewers and not even scale pay.

The Internet has turned into a giant game that everybody's trying to win at and few can. Remember when everybody was gonna have a Webpage, then a blog? How long do you think they're gonna be interested in Tumblr or Pinterest? Remember how long Turntable.fm lasted?

So I won't say there's nothing there at Twitter. There is a kernel. A nugget. But following people is time-consuming, and ever less fulfilling. As for participating yourself, why would you?


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