I have a love/hate relationship with Twitter.
I use it to get the word out when I have a new blog, but I don’t really “Tweet” all day. It feels very narcissistic, and very… time wasty. I like to blog, but I don’t think the minutia of my day is all that interesting.
Do you care that my dog is licking my leg right now as I type this? Probably not. It’s my leg, and I barely care about it.
But it seems as though Twitter might have been the thing that broke through the various internet blocks and cyberbaffles thrown up during the Iranian election, and the thing that started a tidal wave of noise at the main stream media about their stunning lack of coverage of events.
Twitter.
Alternating tweets between coverage of unrest, people talking about the today show, the size of their kids poops and non-sequitor stuff – it’s like reading transcripts of somebody suffering multiple personality disorder and ADD at the same time.
Yeah, one of those personalities is screaming “Pudding! Clam! Donkey Porn!” But every now and then, the other guy screams “Hey! Read this story!”
I just realized my gym shoes are right by my computer and that’s what I’ve been smelling. Do you care about that? I don’t either. And yet, that probably fits in a tweet.
Still: I have to step back and be amazed how this new piece of social networking seems to have transformed the way information spreads.
Twitter. Fueling actual societal change half way around the world. The same place I just read “SUCK ON THAT TRENT REZNOR & NIN PSYCHOFANS”
Some things grind me down. You’ve probably read that here. Or, if you’re new here, dig into a few posts… you’ll can probably hear teeth gnashing in the middle of a lot of those posts.
As Iran is on pins and needles, as students are arrested, as police beat people on the streets for something a lot more important than a basketball game, I’m getting my information from people I don’t know, from everywhere, on Twitter.
So yeah, some things bug the crap out of me.
But occasionally, some things fill me with wonder.
