Dumb Twit

I'm still trying to figure out the whole Twitter phenomenon. Recently, I joined in the faddish thought bubble bonanza, partly out of curiousity and partly because a friend thought I would find it entertaining.

Twitter, if you didn't already know, is an internet based service that allows the user to post text messages about whatever he or she is thinking or doing at any given moment. They call these Tweets. Members can then follow another user's Tweets and/or submit their own. Of course the only way in which anyone is likely to read one of your Tweets is if someone is actually following you (which sounds disturbingly similar to stalking). Without followers, your great pearls of wisdom are lost to the internet ether, which for me is probably where they belong.

As it turns out, if you are a celebrity starlet, like Ashton Kutchar, it seems the entire world needs to know what you are thinking or doing. Thanks to the proliferation of wireless web access, inspiring reports from the rich and famous are posted as they happen. It's like we're right there with  George Clooney as he takes an eye test at the DMV.

Conan O'Brien is the current Twitter sweetheart. He has turned his unfortunate public colonoscopy, at the hands of NBC, into self-promotion gold. O'Brien's witty Tweets have increased his popularity far beyond what he was achieving in his brief stint as Tonight Show host. He has cleverly used Twitter to promote his own comedy tour which is now blazing its way across North America.

Twitter's biggest appeal is mostly among the 25 and under crowd who seem obsessed with typing useless, coded information on microscopic keypads. This generation is addicted to a near constant flow of information in the form of text messages, Tweets and Facebook postings. Some have also been known to communicate with their voices, although this remains undocumented.

I'll concede my confusion over the success of Twitter is generational. I grew up in an era when people didn't feel compelled to spew out whatever brainwave they had, largely because there was no one else around to listen. If you were standing in line at a bank and turned to everyone to declare 'OMG, this lineup is so retarded' you would likely be escorted from the building. If you went to a concert you spent most of your time enjoying the concert and not trying to type the words 'OMFG Aerosmith is totally BA' on a keypad the size of a saltine.

Twitter may be great for celebrities with seemingly vast amounts of spare time and the thumb-typing Clearasil crowd. But for a middle-aged dweeb like myself, I just don't see the point of a service that is mostly a collection of useless thoughts. I have enough of my own. Should I really be enraptured to learn that Kim Kardashian is standing in line at a Starbucks? Maybe if she were standing in front of me at the time. I'm also fairly certain the world could give a rats ass that I just spilled coffee on the shoes I got on sale at Globo.

The thing is, as fads go Twitter could possibly have a shorter shelf life than those 'Frankie Says Relax' t-shirts. It is the celebrity fascination aspect that generates the service's largest traffic, but we all know how stars and their publicists like to control their images. Eventually people will clue in that most of the celeb Tweets are nothing more than blatant attempts at self-promotion aimed at manipulating the public's perception.

Then again, everyone thought the internet was a fad and look how that turned out. Oh well, I guess this will be one more craze that passes me by. If you're feeling out of the loop too, you can take consolation in the news that Miley Cyrus recently quit Twitter. The public was evidently not too pleased that she had real opinions.

That kid is wise beyond her years.

Follow me on Twitter @uncleshroom