2009
I was thinking about Twitter this morning, my thoughts triggered by a news item I saw on the subject. It’s not something I think a great deal about. I am there (Alheithinn if you’re interested) but I don’t use it much. Sometimes to Tweet about a blog post, or I can use it to Tweet updates about MosMaiorum (I anticipate a few of those this winter), or I can use it to find news stories posted by my Digg brothers and sisters (I’ve done more of that this week as I deal with the H1N1 here), but one thing I don’t do is Tweet about me – about the minutiae of my life. I’ve always said, with regards to government spying, that anyone bored enough to want to spy on me is welcome to it, and I pity them. They’ll be bored silly. I really don’t care much about the minutiae of my own life, let alone the minutiae of other lives (I mean, I love y’all but c’mon!). I don’t need to know what so-and-so is doing from one minute to the next. I’m too busy doing something myself. And if you try to record your life in that sort of detail, are you really living your life at all? Or just “aping for the camera” so to speak?
This all leaves out another use for Twitter – our gods given right to say and do whatever we’re thinking about from minute to minute – and not in the privacy of our own homes (where we’re protected from ourselves) but right out there in front of the gods and everybody. Some post pictures they later regret. Some spew verbal diarrhea.
It also provides people with an opportunity to destroy their lives instantly. The old “stop and think before you open your mouth” thing seems to go missing on Twitter where people become accustomed to utter every random thought. Look at John McCain’s daughter and her impulsively snapped and posted image, or more seriously, Larry Johnson, running back for the Kansas City Chiefs, who not only lost his job with the Chiefs this week (being released) but was also fined by the NFL $213,000, the amount he would have earned for the game he’ll miss due to being suspended by the team. Apparently, Larry Johnson’s latent anti-gay attitudes surface when his fingers ran away from his brain and he said what he most likely had been thinking all along.
So here we are, able to sit back and watch lives implode all around us – and Tweet about them. It’s the new circle of life.
I can see where Twitter might have some useful applications. Some of those I mentioned above, for example. Or making plans and avoiding having to call a dozen people to discuss it. Of course, the downside is everybody being in your business but maybe that’s part of the thrill – I don’t know. I have yet to find a real application as far as religion goes but I probably haven’t given it enough thought. I just don’t think about Twitter all that much. I don’t understand the obsession people have with it. I’m not against social networking. I think it’s a great thing. I think it does make the world a smaller place, and people who can get to know each other across international borders are less likely to want to shoot at one another. Maybe someday, we’ll feel enough like a human family that a new sort of cosmotheism will be born, something that can transcend ethnic, religious, political, and cultural boundaries. I hope so. Things change. The Internet has changed since it started out. It will be interesting to see how Twitter changes and adapts and is adapted in the years to come.
Meanwhile, we’ll be amused or horrified by the occasional self-destructive episode of somebody who didn’t stop to think about what they were doing. At least on a blog, I have time to write a post (often on MS WORD), sleep on it, think about it, re-read it, sometimes not post it (I’ve had a few of those over the years). But Twitter is real time. Writing it yesterday makes it obsolete. You don’t sleep on it there. It’s “go,go,go!” all the time. That’s the whole point. Immediacy = relevance. Maybe I’m just too old for it. Time moves too fast and I want to take my time. Or maybe I’ve just found my comfort zone and I’m happy where I am.
I feel the same way you do. I have not succumbed to Twitter, either. I also don't feel that we are Luddites for eschewing this newest way to embarass ourselves.
To me Twitter makes no sense. I am on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, but Twitter just seems like a way to spew more nothingness.
Luddites…I like that lol. That's ONE thing I haven't been called recently, though I've been accused of being a "hater" for speaking out against hate (still trying to work my mind around that one.
MN_Homesteader, I find myself feeling that way too…spewing more nothingness. As I said, I can see where it has some application for sharing news articles, etc, but I'm willing to bet the vast majority of the bandwidth is taken up with "spew" as you so poetically put it
I'm on LinkedIn (I think) but I can't remember the last time I used it!
I use Twitter for all kinds of things — personal and professional. It's like an open chat room. Then again, I'm heavily into hash-tagging and Twitter memes, so I guess it shows.
@quantumelody
Kayleigh! ::mock shock:: I'm glad to hear people can get good use out of it. I've always been curious about different ways people might use it. I never thought about it as an open chat room, but I can see where it could serve as such. I think I OD'd on chat rooms back in my AOL days so I avoid that scene these days (I wasted too much of my life doing that – was a real addict). Do you find much use or application for it in a religious sense? As I noted in my post, am curious about that too and I'll ask you since you're the first one to comment who is a heavy duty Twitter user
I have three Twitter accounts. @annyikha is where I post brief improv devotional poetry during my weekly Kyklos Apollon ritual, so I suppose you could say Twitter has a religious use.
At @quantumelody, I sometimes comment about ritual or religion. I think we should organize a #polytheism hash-tag party because that would make the Muslims complaining about shirk a bit less visible. I mostly use @quantumelody for personal/professional things. I post sometimes (not all the time) when I update KALLISTI. I always post when I have a new webnovel update.
My third account is still in beta, so I'm not adding it or publicizing it. It's a fictional character from my webnovel (Nàsis, the woman organizing the five folio letters written by the main character). I plan on using it as a nice publicity front.
Twitter chats happen when a group of people develop a special hash tag (#writechat, for example) to talk about something important. There are third-party apps that you can get to do this. Twitter is kind of new, so most of the people in the chats stay on-topic. They just don't use the hashtag for off-topic things, anyhow.
Kayleigh, I'm interested in your ideas about utilizing Twitter but I am going to expose my ignorance here by asking what a hash-tag is. You know I'm on board for any project concerning polytheism. So if you can fill me in on how it works, let me know and you can count me in.
I'll have to have a look at your webnovel. I have a project I've begun working on myself (at http://helhest.blogspot.com). I have been working on it for several months now without actually posting any of it. It will take the form of entries in a captain's log in a universe set in the future (in a xenophobic post-invasion human star empire). I just completed an image for the captain and am working on a couple of symbols (one for the imperial house and one for the ship itself).
Hash-tags are really simple.
http://twitter.com/quantumelody/status/5469023124
Above is a post I made a while ago about health care reform. I used the tag #healthcarereform so people could find it easily. If you click on #healthcarereform, you will be taken to a page that shows live updates of everyone else using the #healthcarereform tag.
A hash-tag is a word (or phrase with no spaces) that begins with a #.
So, say, I could tweet
Lit candle for #Hestia this morning & prayed to Hermes for success at work. #polytheism
and it would index. Not that hard. If I were to post that to Twitter, #Hestia and #polytheism would be turned into links.
ah, twitter…..useless, totally. I have an account over there, but hardly ever use it. I try to interact with people – no results. Everyone is interested ONLY in promoting their own little blog, website, products, services etc and forget about the most important thing – personality.
I am really not so good about writing articles, thus I am not really blogging all that much. I relate to Facebooka lot better because I can ask a question, get an answer, interact with people etc
Thanks, Hayleigh. I'll keep all that in mind!
Mea Culpa, I haven't been able to get into the whole person to person interaction side of Twitter. I try to use it to promote stories (the only reason I signed up for it). Like you, I do my social interaction on Facebook and here on my blog, though of course, as you can see, I do like to write posts!