If our linguistically challenged forefathers had the option to Tweet their grunts and moans, I’m almost certainly positive they would.
OK, maybe not. But I’m sure cavemen and women used to lay awake at night, stone and chisel in hand, thinking about the self-absorbed things they could etch for people in far away villages they would probably never meet.
Hi, my name is (@newsbee) Lanai – and I’m a Twitterholic.
For those of you who aren’t in the know, Twitter is the nifty little “social network” that allows you to vomit anything into cyberspace 140 characters or less at a time. It’s the micro-blog of all blogs, the ‘it’ party of web 2.0 and it’s basically net suicide if you’re not on it.
But at the risk of offending all my Tweeps and Twibes out there - there’s just nothing “social” about Twitter. Sure people are talking, and the communication can often go both ways but unlike Facebook and MySpace you don’t actually have to know the people you’re talking to. Chances are most of the time they’re not listening anyway.
Twitter is just one giant echo chamber for egotistical lonely people who want to tell the world their every thought 140 characters at a time. It’s self-promotion at its most shameless level.
It’s the 21st century ego-boosting equivalent of, well actually, it’s like nothing ever before it. Twitter helps those insecure celebrities and everyday people alike believe the number of “followers” they have equates to how important they are in real-life. It’s an excuse to shout into the darkness and randomly brag about the most mundane uneventful happenings in your life hoping someone else will actually care about what you have to say.
And you know what - I’m positively, absolutely 100 per cent addicted to it.
Think crack cocaine in the eighties, Hannah Montana for 13-somethings and Twilight’s Edward Cullen for possibly every vampire-loving slut and virgin on the planet and you haven’t even touched the void on how addictive Twitter can be.
Just over a year ago I had absolutely no idea what Twitter was. I remember looking at our Technology reporter’s computer screen and thinking “what the hell is that freaky little bird site and why is this person continuously checking it?”.
Now, I CAN’T STOP TWEETING. More often than not I find myself thinking in Tweets. Or thinking to myself “how could I put that into 140 characters or less?”. People at work have mentioned things around me and then seriously turned in my direction and said “Don’t Tweet that Lanai”.
Apart from news updates and commentary, my Twitter musings often include the type of food I’m eating, my thoughts on the opposite sex and the weird and wacky things I see in my everyday life.
I’m a massive RT-er (Re-Tweet-er) and every now and then I’ll throw in a foreign language Tweet just to keep things interesting.
Honestly, I’m obsessed. I’m like a heroin addict. Forget about Trainspotting, it’s all about Twitterspotting for me. Requiem for a Tweet anyone?
My first twitter hit was on October 15, 2008 at precisely 13:19:45 (AEST). At last count I was “following” 347 “people”, had 811 “followers” and had clocked up 2157 “updates”. That’s on average 10 a day, every day, since I started. I can tell you now it hasn’t been that constant – and some days I’ve posted more than 20 tweets in the space of 24 hours.
Over the past week I’ve tried to stick to a self-imposed Twitter ban during work hours. A good friend at work (who is also on Twitter) and I agreed four Tweets between the hours of 9am-5pm was the maximum allowed.
Trust me when I say it’s been an ENORMOUS struggle. There have been times when all I’ve wanted was Amy Winehouse to (crawl out of her hole) come back from vacation in St. Lucia and back me up on Twitter rehab “no, no, no”.
But in the end I know I need to escape the clutches of this pseudo-social network that has me like a hungry killer python’s prey.
Now, before you all start “un-following” me, I’m not bashing Twitter completely. I think it definitely has its uses, and is absolutely revolutionary when it comes to news reporting.
Twitter has allowed journalists to make contact with people and break news events in ways that just simply weren’t possible before. The Mumbai terror attacks, Hudson River plane crash, US and Iran elections, Victoria fires and countless other events have been brought to life because of Twitter.
But the same colleague who brought Twitter into my life recently pointed out to me that while it has sped up and facilitated the spread of news it has also been useful in the spread of lies.
Hello???? How can we forget Channel 9’s entertainment (phoney) journalist, Richard Wilkins, reporting on live TV that Hollywood actor Jeff Goldblum had fallen off a cliff in New Zealand and died. The reports turned out to be fake Twitter hype but I guess Wilko hasn’t caught onto exactly what Twitter is all about huh?.
When it gets to the point where you’re so starved for attention you tell complete strangers on Twitter how good the cupcakes you’re eating “right now” are. Or you’re that hard pressed to find a good book publisher you decide to Tweet your entire novel – I think it’s time to put down the needle and consider that jabbing your keyboard is not the way to live anymore.
Maybe we all just need to get back to a good old cup of tea and a chinwag.
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