We can all rejoice the twitter generation has arrived, and I wonder if twitter didn't exist would we all go round talking to ourselves in little sound-bytes like 'I would love to stop for coffee but got to rush.'
I have no doubt that twitter's popularity is due in no small measure to it's female users,women can now comment safely on every area of their lives yet not give a hoot if anyone is interested, I see loads of 'night, night all,' tweets from women who are valiantly sending their extended family ie, the whole world to sleep.
Men use it for different reasons of course there is the hard edged business guy who tweets common sense with his hard nosed business values, he is out hunting and he will make a kill. Also there are the more shy retiring types who are slightly embarrassed by the technology so they reluctantly try and be funny, or quote from some Greek philosopher!
The one thing that strikes me about twitter is of course it's reinforcment of the worlds middle class agenda, I cant imagine poor people tweeting, 'going begging today, hope it goes well?' later of course they would recieve lots of tweets from their followers, 'how did you do?' with my hard nosed business guys asking, 'how much did you make, nice profit!'
So I resign myself to another day of blandness reading lots of silly notices with links to web-sites and photo's etc, I will hear from both men and women about business the state of the world with news and sports, breaking news before it has even happened that is the magic of twitter.
Yet can anyone enlighten me I thought that twitter was a tool to facilitate discussion well I dont know but have you ever tried to discuss anything on twitter?
People run scared hide behind their little icons one can sense their tone change, the bland stuff like, ' Meeting Ryan Tubridy today, cant wait,' is replaced by a deafening silence.
When one persists in probing an individual as in a recent case I took exception to her term 'Breaking News,' during the Japanese disaster, she blocked me from following her silly tweets. It was this journalists way of tweeting and discussing the world today, and the way the media works.
Of course I know I am an annoying tweeter I write in the early hours of the morning and sometimes subject to fatigue I can be a little sarcastic you know and sometimes people read tweets and take them at face value, and I go to sleep all smug congratulating myself on how clever I am, and how the silly Dublin fourite will miss the point!
Come to think of it that is actually the only good thing I can say about this forum for tweetering twits, I am off now with my little bowl got some begging to do!