Does Tweeting in Your Head Count?
I have no desire to tweet b/c everything I do would take far more than 140 characters to describe and likely include lots of digression and asides. Plus, nothing I do is important enough to share with everybody I know.
But sometimes I have a flash of brilliance and I wish I had someone to turn around and share my insight with. Is that what tweeting is? An intangible listener beside you that thinks you are brilliant? That hangs on your every thought? That … dare I say ... gives a shit? Because that? It does sound kind of cool.
But tweeting bs like, “I ate a carrot” or “I’m awake now” is, in my opinion, more than a little bit self indulgent. I know I don’t give a shit about what anybody ate for lunch or saw on the way to work. Do you? Really?
Mainly the reason I don’t Twitter, or MySpace, or Facebook or otherwise socially network is because I like to keep my business private. It’s amazing what you can learn about people from reading their public profiles. In a world where identity theft and cyber crime are rampant it amazes me that people are so willing to publish their personal business! The other night I wasted about three hours of my life looking up people I’ve known: old boyfriends, neighbors, grammar school classmates and such. I was amazed at how much information I could learn about their personal lives without even signing up for an account or “friending” them. (Friend as a verb? Really? Is this what we get instead of flying cars?)
Anyway, I could easily learn their marital status, spouse’s name, children’s names, religious affiliations, employers, Alma maters, and also get a pretty good idea of their current standard of living - and that’s just the public stuff. I shudder to think what kinds of details these people are posting to their friends. Their social security numbers? Savings account balances? Where does it end? What are people not proud of these days? What secrets do they still keep? I’m thinking it must be only the really creepy kinds of stuff because they seem to be sharing everything else with the world.
I prefer to have friends who actually come to my house; people I have to put clothes on to see; people whose voices I would actually recognize in the dark and whose hands I can hold when one of us needs it. I’m not sure I can even really know a person until I’ve felt their heartbeat against my own. Do I have on-line friends? Sure I do! But even with those persons I’ve made the transference into real life and cried with over the phone.
I guess my bottom line is this: If I care about you I have your number and you have mine. If we went to high school together and then fell out of touch there was probably a very good reason for that. I’ll stick with posting the funny crap that happens in my life and I’ll even edit it if it makes a better story. I’ll use pseudonyms as often as I can remember to and if I forget I won’t sweat it. My life is my own to share only as I see fit. I’ll just consider it doing my small part to keep the interwebs free of crap nobody really cares about any way.
And if the rapture happens or the world is otherwise in peril will someone please just call me?
But sometimes I have a flash of brilliance and I wish I had someone to turn around and share my insight with. Is that what tweeting is? An intangible listener beside you that thinks you are brilliant? That hangs on your every thought? That … dare I say ... gives a shit? Because that? It does sound kind of cool.
But tweeting bs like, “I ate a carrot” or “I’m awake now” is, in my opinion, more than a little bit self indulgent. I know I don’t give a shit about what anybody ate for lunch or saw on the way to work. Do you? Really?
Mainly the reason I don’t Twitter, or MySpace, or Facebook or otherwise socially network is because I like to keep my business private. It’s amazing what you can learn about people from reading their public profiles. In a world where identity theft and cyber crime are rampant it amazes me that people are so willing to publish their personal business! The other night I wasted about three hours of my life looking up people I’ve known: old boyfriends, neighbors, grammar school classmates and such. I was amazed at how much information I could learn about their personal lives without even signing up for an account or “friending” them. (Friend as a verb? Really? Is this what we get instead of flying cars?)
Anyway, I could easily learn their marital status, spouse’s name, children’s names, religious affiliations, employers, Alma maters, and also get a pretty good idea of their current standard of living - and that’s just the public stuff. I shudder to think what kinds of details these people are posting to their friends. Their social security numbers? Savings account balances? Where does it end? What are people not proud of these days? What secrets do they still keep? I’m thinking it must be only the really creepy kinds of stuff because they seem to be sharing everything else with the world.
I prefer to have friends who actually come to my house; people I have to put clothes on to see; people whose voices I would actually recognize in the dark and whose hands I can hold when one of us needs it. I’m not sure I can even really know a person until I’ve felt their heartbeat against my own. Do I have on-line friends? Sure I do! But even with those persons I’ve made the transference into real life and cried with over the phone.
I guess my bottom line is this: If I care about you I have your number and you have mine. If we went to high school together and then fell out of touch there was probably a very good reason for that. I’ll stick with posting the funny crap that happens in my life and I’ll even edit it if it makes a better story. I’ll use pseudonyms as often as I can remember to and if I forget I won’t sweat it. My life is my own to share only as I see fit. I’ll just consider it doing my small part to keep the interwebs free of crap nobody really cares about any way.
And if the rapture happens or the world is otherwise in peril will someone please just call me?
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