Tweet, Tweet, WHAT?

I don't Twitter, or Tweet, or whatever you call it.

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I used to have a Twitter account. I had it for all of three weeks. I updated a couple of times a day for the first three days, then once a day for about a week. Then I stopped. I became aware of something important: I have nothing interesting enough to say that requires me to tweet more than once a week.

You might think that this would be a humbling, if not depressing revelation. Realizing that nothing I could possibly post to Twitter was of much interest to anyone who followed me should have crushed my self-esteem. I actually had followers on Twitter (only three of which were actual people I knew, and only one was a real friend), but I couldn't imagine that my day-to-day activities were all that interesting to them. And I certainly couldn't compete with some of the posts of people I followed.

So I started to think about this new phenomenon of sharing your every move with those around you. The social networking boom of the early twenty-first century has taken the United States, and possibly the world by storm (although I can't imagine that your average 30-something Iraqui cares all that much about Facebook). Nearly everyone I know has a Facebook account, including my father (more on that in a later post), and "Facebook" has finally become a verb, as in, "I'll Facebook you about that later." Finding my place in this new world has been (and continues to be) an interesting journey. As far as Twitter goes, let me share what I've learned about myself.

First of all, like many people, I have a slight voyeuristic side. I like to know what famous people are up to, sometimes. But I am not really someone who likes the spotlight (unless I'm performing). My daily life is a somewhat private matter that I don't necessarily want people prying into. So posts about my family were definitely not an option (and wouldn't have been all that interesting anyway - "Took the kids to baseball today, ate a bad hotdog...").

I'm also not a narcissist. That's heavy, and maybe a little unfair of me to call Twitter addicts narcissists; after all I am writing a blog. The difference is, I don't really expect or care if anyone reads my blog. I do this mostly for me. I honestly think that there are a lot of people out there who think that someone actually cares about the banal and pedantic tweets with which they pollute cyberspace. This is not a blanket generalization - Twitter is an excellent way to get information out (especially if you have a large number of followers). I'm really talking about those individuals who use Twitter to tell their friends what they just had for lunch, or what they are going to be doing later that day. If you really need your friends to know something, call them.

I realize that this may come off as a bit harsh. I understand. If you're reading this (why?), and you find yourself a little upset by what I've written, then you just might be one of the people to whom I've been referring. Take a good look at your recent tweets, and ask yourself if there's anything you've tweeted in the last week that anyone should care about. If there is, then go about your business. If not, and you've been polluting cyberspace, tweet an apology and move on.