I AM DEADMAN. HEAR ME TWEET! (Partial Video Blog Transctript)
Big news today. Ashton Kutcher just attracted his one millionth follower on the microblogging service Twitter, a milestone which has generated a fair amount of fanfare, but it’s only the beginning as cult leader Oprah is going to feature Twitter on her talk show today and send her first tweet over the air.
Oh, how wonderful.
Excuse me if I don’t join in the celebration – if I’m not all, ahem, atwitter with the news – but I have very mixed feelings here …
Now I am obviously no Luddite and as you can tell from the mere fact I am video blogging, I am not immune to the allure of banal self-expression and interactive communication, I enjoy reading status updates from my friends on Facebook – which at its core is all Twitter really is – and even occasionally provide my own update, but somehow Twitter crossed a line that offended my delicate sensibilities …
I realized quickly that what infuriated me the most about Twitter is how beautifully it fits with our time. What a perfect metaphor for our society. Our unquenchable thirst for fame and recognition, our almost pathological need to reveal private, mostly unimportant details of our lives to anyone who will listen, not to mention our rapidly dwindling attention span and deteriorating communication skills.
Twitter is inevitable. Few people bother with books anymore. Newspapers are an endangered species. The letter is a lost art. Real-life contact is an inconvenience. Communities and neighborhoods where we physically look out for one another are artifacts of a distant past.
It’s time to face it. Whether I use the service or not, I am still a twit who tweets. We are all Generation Twitter. So why not follow Ashton and Oprah and twit boldly into our glorious 21st century. Resistance is futile. I have seen the future, and it has 140 characters or fewer ….
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