Elitist Objections to Twitter
April 13, 2009 by jmtz
Twitter is a mixed bag. You have to applaud the way in which it shrewdly draws on Facebook, SMS, and social networking. If you have ever yearned to feel connected to the actions and thoughts of others at any or all moments in time, your prayer has been heard. Through Twitter’s interface, communication has simultaneously become more personal, concise, and accessible. Even if its attraction is far from native for you, there are at least a dozen other reasons to pay attention to Twitter, but you won’t find them catalogued here.
In this post, I wish to protest the measuring out of life with little coffee spoons. On the eve of my birthday, I went to bed wrapped in warm thoughts of the world in which I live, then awoke at 25 with a magnificent snort of disgust. Multiple revelations ensued, the first of which was: ”I really dislike Twitter.” Most of my objections to Twitter are not exclusive to Twitter, per se. Rather I dislike Twitter for its unchecked exploitation of mutual cultural harms, especially those that plague social networks.
1. It affirms self-promotion and celebrity.* 2. It cavalierly realigns the distinctions between the private and public. 3. It confirms our vulgar susceptibility to the technological arms-race.
4. It commodifies social networking culture (i.e., commercialization of social media/data).
5. In the spirit of Trow’s “context of no context,” it immortalizes society’s flippant answer-of-no-answer to that ontological question: “What am I doing?”
*
Even as I write this I choke beneath the weight of these crumudgeonly sentiments (Help?!?!?!). I feel hopelessly old and threadbare. Perhaps one of you can help me find redeeming qualities I have yet to discover.
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* Ironically, these aims, self-promotion and celebrity, conflict in the Twittersphere since Twitter is anything but meritocratic (as character-limitations decrease, humanity’s profundity seems to increase).
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I can sympathize with your distaste for Twitter. I was pretty reluctant to start using it myself, and I’ve been rethinking the whole social networking thing myself. For example, I recently deleted my Facebook account entirely (which, ironically I suppose, I announced on Twitter).
But on the other hand, I have been using Twitter a fair bit in the past two months or so, and I’ve found some value in it. I think the difference between usefulness and uselessness lies in two areas: who you follow, and what you write about.
For my part, I follow a few distinct groups. First, I follow close friends. And by close friends, I really do mean friends in the normal sense of the word, not in the Facebook sense. If I were to go to lunch with those friends, I wouldn’t think it odd if they told me details about their lives, so I don’t think its odd to find out something about them online. Second, I follow historians and digital humanists. Those people might throw in a personal detail every now and then, but the majority of their tweets are about their work. A lot of what they write about are links to articles online, so it’s basically like following a link blog. Third, I follow institutions, like the Smithsonian, a news service for Waltham, and a Boston Globe feed about the Red Sox. These are just services for finding content elsewhere online. In other words, the ratio of content that I’m interested in to information about what people had for breakfast is very high.
I tend to write mostly about things that fit some sort of scholarly interest: what I’m reading, what I’m writing about, what projects I’m working on, etc. I’m trying to make both my Twitter stream and my blog professional tools, rather than just personal details. You can judge for yourself whether I’m succeeding–maybe I’m not. http://twitter.com/lincolnmullen
And what are blogs, but tweets magnified in verbosity? Beware your own blogular beam before worrying about others’ twitteriffic motes.
That was all within 140 characters, by the way.
I knew I could count on a scathing (dare I say, trademark) 140-character rejoinder! And I can’t hold that palpable rebuttal against you, J.
On a more serious note, I’m far from Luddite. To someone as relationally careless as myself, social networking is a divine gift (and, ironically, a curse since I gain the indulgence of allowing hundreds of people the illusion of relational intimacy even as I aloofly retain privacy). I do maintain a facebook account in order to remain connected both personally and professionally until I find a suitable replacement. Despite misgivings about Twitter’s intensely exploitive nature, I have been sheepishly intrigued by its blossoming professional functions. Thanks for sharing. Once Twitter becomes as personally and professionally indispensable, I (along with any other conscientious objectors) will probably overcome all principled obstacles.
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Twitter: “Don’t fear me baby, it’s just destiny!”
JM: Riiight…