Twitter: apt name

If we are to believe the slavering electronic and print media, who are fawning over it wherever one turns, we are supposed to bow down and adore the Internet’s latest thrill, the new ‘social medium’ dubbed Twitter. Its goal: make a profound (?) statement in a 140-letter public post about what one is ‘doing.’ When I was growing up in England, being “all a-twitter” meant confused, gibbering uncontrollably. How apt.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that “95% of human behavior can be intuited.” He was right. Almost everything we do, most of the time, is staggeringly banal. Our time spent on significant, world-changing (even our own world) events represents a stunningly small percentage of our waking hours, no matter how exalted our rank. If we recount what we are doing, continually, we are narcissistic, self-important or self-aggrandizing liars. For the most part, we need not know what others are doing, nor do they need to know what we’re up to, unless we are directly involved in serious activities (a familial, professional, social or sexual relationship that is, in actuality, no one else’s business). It takes more than a text message to establish understanding, respect or trust. If we have a significant undertaking going on, we phone or email. Better yet, we write a letter or meet. The rest is silence. Or should be.

Articles in various media tout the numerous ‘followings’ that celebrities are acquiring when they ‘Twitter.’ Individuals who ‘twitter’ claim that they make important contacts through the exchanges that result from their activity. Really? Help me understand how a 140-letter message from someone I hardly know can improve my life. Explain to me how thumbing a cell-phone keyboard raises the IQ—this can get you killed if you do it while driving, and it’s forbidden by law in the saner regions of Planet Earth.

If you want to know what this is all about, get a decent definition. Turn to your reliable Oxford English Dictionary, which defines twitter perfectly: ‘(To) chatter, especially in an idle or trivial manner.’ The OED may be quaint, but it’s accurate.

How trivial? Let me quote the ‘twitter’ of a supposed celebrity, who won an Oscar recently for writing a screenplay (yes). Two of her contributions (I researched this, reluctantly): ‘I’m doing good at quitting smoking’ and (vs. her photo) ‘Did my own makeup.’ The woman can’t even twitter grammatically. And she wants us to hang on her every word and respect her?

I confess that I don’t care what she is doing, or any other celebrity. If she, or anyone else, cares about what I am doing, I would be surprised.

I rest my case.

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