feb 23
2009
I Tweet
Why do people Twitter? Because of their underdeveloped sense of the self, of course.
6 comments
Maybe if I had a more developed sense of self I wouldn't have to be making fancy phone calls all the time, I could just write letters like a sane person.
posted by BradOFarrell at 12:49 PM on February 23, 2009 
I disagree...
http://thepopcorntrick.blogspot.com/2009/02/entertaining-oscar-night-on-twitter.html
But perhaps I just feel hurt that I was called lame in an article (generally speaking).
posted by goose at 2:03 PM on February 23, 2009
Twitter's retarded simplicity makes "op-ed'rs" write a a lot puff pieces, but Robert Scoble has said everything you can imagine about Twitter.
posted by JayCruz at 2:38 PM on February 23, 2009
I knew it! I say the same goes for Facebook. Danah Boyd laid it down like that for teen use of MySpace.
I don't think it has to be a negative thing - it's people getting what they need - I just think it's surprising that people need it so much more than I realized.
I like to imagine what people in various historical scenarios would
Facebook and tweet about if they had it back then. Take Jesus and the disciples, for example. I see lots of asskissery and tagging Jesus in photos all the time. Except Judas would be all passive aggressive, which the viewing audience would recognize as foreshadowing.
But seriously it's interesting to think about whether people in a pre-media age would have felt the need to use it, or would have taken it up if available, and about what it would have done for them psychologically. I kind of think people would have done it, regardless of when, and for the same reasons as now, given that vanity has been around long enough to be a deadly sin. Or a less judgmental view of it might be something more about the search for acceptance or something similarly philosophical re the human condition.
posted by Eric at 12:17 AM on February 24, 2009
Fair point, Darryl. The original article and I should acknowledge that there are different kinds of uses and users. The kinds of users and posts that the article is talking about do exist and I think the article is right about them. But Twitter/Facebook/etc. are also handy for other reasons that don't necessarily have psychological implications.
posted by Eric at 6:00 PM on February 24, 2009
Last night even Congress got in to the twitter frenzy. ABC news showed congressman sending twitter messages to the fellow colleges during and after the presidential address. Twitter is fastly becoming the way to communicate on the internet. We are designing a new twitter software to help everyone. More on my blog
posted by Vince Craine at 5:16 AM on February 26, 2009
NOTE: The commenting window has expired for this post.
