Twitter is destroying America. Bicoastal City recently discussed the pervasiveness of Twitter in modern society. The medium is transfigured to facilitate communication, friendship, news media, social antics, and celebrity apologies. The medium has failed to impress or captivate me. The largest feeling I hold regarding Twitter is one of disgust. It boggles my mind that 140 characters are passing as legitimate means of communication. I cannot fathom the acceptance of apologies, the collection of legitimate news information, and the fascination with “followers”. Is Twitter a cult? Or does it more closely parallel a simple medium for stalkers?
Other communication forms also frustrate me, but it has always been Twitter that sits most poorly. Twitter is ruining the ability of society to recognize socially adept individuals from socially ridiculous. Just in case you were curious society, “gr8”, “lol”, “lmao”, and any other letter saving abbreviations are not words. Replacing letters with numbers and emotions with emoticons do not qualify you for much of anything, but looking like an idiot. In what world except twitter can I search for “The New York Times” and have anything except my query listed in the top thirty search items?
A recent study from the University of Southern California found that technological overstimulation can lead to an inability to properly process emotional responses, especially to psychological pain. Twitter’s homepage feed adds a new Twitter message roughly every seven seconds. While all Twitters carry a different amount of followers and updates, the constant stream of information availability is unhealthy for an individual’s ability to process through emotions. This lack of processing may directly impact the morality of society.
Back in 2009, Gavin Newsom announced his candidacy for Governor of California over the site
“It’s official– running for Gov of CA. Wanted you to be the first to know. Need your help. Check out video: http://tr.im/iOCN and ReTweet.”
Please, Mr-I-want-to-be-Governor, ignore the fact that our public education system is failing and continue to encourage your followers to leave out pronouns, articles, English isn’t the national language here anyway, so I guess you really don’t need to follow the rules to be in charge.
Is it really necessary for members of Congress to tweet during Presidential addresses? Maybe I missed something, but I thought the president, regardless of party, should garner a smidge of respect from other elected representatives. Wouldn’t members of Congress have better served their country by listening to the speech instead of attempting to condense their witty thoughts to less than 140 characters?
As far as Bicoastal City’s defense of Kanye’s use of Twitter as a platform for apologizing to one Taylor Swift, I cannot get behind this either. I understand a public apology for a public offense. Kanye, however, offended Taylor Swift personally, and should have appropriately “manned up” and addressed her as though she is an actual individual, not a detached, computerized, form of human.
Kanye went on to thank the creators of Twitter,
"Thank you Biz Stone and Evan Williams for creating a platform where we can communicate directly."
Really, Kanye? Really? This is the only place where people can communicate directly? Oh thank God someone finally thought of a way for people to get in touch! The postal service, Alexander Graham Bell, Samuel Morse, the internet, email, and the fact that you have assistants to call Taylor Swift for you are definitely not effective forms of communication. You’re right. Twitter is absolutely the only way you can communicate directly with Taylor Swift, not engage thousands of other people, and address her only.
Growing up in a grammar conscious family, it is not in my genetics to accept Twitter as the phenomenon society has adopted. I absolutely detest the abbreviation of words, especially the submission of numbers for letters. Sentences are supposed to have a noun and verb. Sentences are supposed to be able to communicate a message effectively. Recently, my mother has taken to sending me text messages that I swear are written by a twelve-year-old girl. There are moments when I literally cannot understand what she is attempting to say. The other day her message was as follows (no, I am not making this up),
“That will work. I am :( you are :s about this B-) message. ({}) :D ;)”
I know this is a personal vendetta against my midlife-crisis-having mother, but the larger point is that in no way should that “message” qualify as a form of communication. Twitter is encouraging the use of poor grammar, lax communication, while simultaneously blasting apart society to make way for electronic, public relations apologies. Twitter is stifling the ability of individuals to interact personally, carry face-to-face conversations, write in complete and proper sentences, and build social relationships and skills necessary for participating in our democratic society. Twitter is failing America.
I agree that twitter, Kanye's view that he is communicating directly, and social networks are a joke, the new messaging language that has developed may not be a sign that we are "dumber". It may be that we are using these multiple forms of communication because we are busy multidimensional people. We are not engaging in long conversations with our networks of 2343 friends because they are not really our friends and we merely want to keep them updated on the superficial points of our lives.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Dumber". He points out similar ideas that you describe yet I must say the same for his argument. He is not engaging in long verses of prose and immersing himself in long books because he is now getting the main points of the book that he needs and MOVES ON. The speed of these internet applications reflect this mobility of our attention. While it may shorten our attention span to some degree, I feel that when a topic of deep interest comes out in anyone, our post-modern skepticism will lunge out and beg for further reading. We can now absorb more information of many more topics and view our more valued topics with more perspectives rather than focus on a specialization and remain in that sphere.
Yes, I agree that technology has presented us with more forms of communication, and we are definitely multidimensional people. I just find it fascinating that people choose to engage in these activities because I feel very far from them. I don't have any desire to join Twitter. I can't remember if I deleted my Facebook, but also can't remember the last time I went about viewing it. I don't understand why people want to be "friends" with thousands and thousands of people they have never met. I have no desire to keep random people, acquaintances I have met once, and old high school boyfriends updates on my life. I'm pretty sure there was a reason I stopped talking to them. I just simply do not get the point. These social sites, with their increasing ability to give second-by-second location and information updates just irk me to my core. I know that other people have adopted these new communication mediums whole-heartedly, but I honestly do not think it is in my genetics to grasp the need for a Twitter.
ReplyDeleteAt first I totally hated Twitter when I was told to create an account for journalism class. Though I agree with some of your points about the rather annoying parts about the website, I've found it is an easy way to read headlines and scan news.
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