I just exhausted a Twitter phase. I was tossed for a while between quitting it all together or just mostly ignoring it. I’ve decided on the latter. Sean talked me into it with one simple Twit. That demonstrates the power of Twitter! So why am I quitting?
Because Twitter was making me stupid. You have to express yourself in 140 characters or less and so you can’t Twit complex thoughts. When you communicate too often in sound bytes, you begin to think in sound bytes. Which is probably what is wrong with 90% of our politicians, they can’t think in complex terms. At the same time, there is a benefit to a drill like Twitter. It forces you to get to the main point and express yourself in a fashion that eschews superfluous elocutionary flourish. Like what I just did there. Really, that’s not all that bad. It allows you to think like Jonathan Edwards but not write like him. However, as I got hooked on Twitter I started thinking in 140 character Twit-speak (pun intended if not delivered). It is like the difference between a Robert Frost poem and haiku. Almost all haiku is useless but it is easier to write because it is short. I’m not claiming to be Robert Frost but I am aiming at more than:
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator
One of the things that triggered this desertion of Twitter was when I noticed that I hadn’t written anything on my blog in a while and then I saw some updates from a few Twitter friends mentioning that they’d neglected their blogs and RSS feeds and stuff. For Twitter? Really?
So if I were to write this post on Twitter, it might look like this:
Time for me to back off of Twitter & spend time with complete sentences. Better for my brain.
3 Comments
Tim,
These are good thoughts.
I’ve recently created a Twitter account but really haven’t started Twittering yet. If I do, it will probably be just to point people to my blog or other things of interest since it’s hard to have substantive interaction with that medium.
I’m thinking Twitter may be useful to ask questions of a broad range of people who may have more knowledge of something than I do and things like that.
I think that your on to something, however I’ve just begun to enjoy the non complex thoughts expressed 140 or less. Twitter is for when you’re lazy and want your jibrish to makes sense.
*Side Note:I presume that people like Paul of Tarsus would never use twitter. Probably some one more like Jay Leno??
I think there is a place for Twitter, but my problem was that I spent too much time on it. I started trying to think of cool, pithy things to say in 140 < instead of thinking full thoughts and then Twitting a summary. Twitter isn't evil but it can be addictive. Beware! Beeeewaaaaare!! :)