I have to admit that up until recently, I really hadn't gotten into the whole Twitter thing. I just have a hard time taking anything seriously that has the word "twit" right up front. It's for similar, but entirely different reasons I can't bring myself to eat Cheese Whiz.
But ill-named, semi-edible cheese products aside, it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the world's growing fascination with this phenomena called Twitter. For those of you who, like me, have tried to avoid knowing what it is - lest it suck away any remaining need to speak to live people - let me give you a brief rundown.
Have you ever sent a text message from your cell phone? It's like that, except your little text message can go out to multiple people. Oh, and you're limited to only 140 characters. I know - mind-blowing right? But apparently it is all anyone in the media can talk about right now, from Oprah to CNN.
Heck, I'd love to be telling you about this new video game I have where I get to shoot people with a rocket launcher, but I, too am compelled to report on Twitter. It must be mind control or something.
It's free to get a Twitter account. You just go to the conveniently named Twitter.com and give them your name, a nickname, and a working email address. Once that's done, you're taken to a homepage where you've already been randomly subscribed to receive several other people's "tweets" (that's what they call your messages - seriously, I didn't make that up), and a nice empty box sits at the top waiting for your first post.
That's where I hit my first snag. Well, actually my first snag was trying to get over that posts are called tweets (insert your own "this is for the birds" joke - why should I do all the work?). But who was actually going to read, or even care to read my sigh, fine tweets? People who subscribe to receive your tweets are called followers (like you're a Kool-Aid wielding cult leader or something), and you can invite people to receive your updates, or they can find you through a search on Twitter.
I was randomly subscribed to the Twitter feeds from actor Kevin Spacey and super hot model Kim Kardashian. Ms. Kardashian went to see the Britney Spears concert last night and had a swell time, in case you wanted to know. Yeah, me neither.
And therein lies the problem. While Twitter is useful for getting things like news updates (this newspaper's Twitter feed, for example, will update followers when a new story is posted on the Internet), it also exposes you to every random thought people feel the need to write down. Some of the actual tweets I saw were along the lines of "I'm going to get a glass of water," "Getting my hair done," and "I like cheese." Now, I am quite fond of cheese myself (but not of the "whiz" variety), but that information is certainly nothing to write home (or anyone else) about.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems rather narcissistic to think that even your closest friends would be interested in being informed about the mind-numbing minutia of your every waking moment. To me, you'd just end up looking like a royal twit.
