I love Jon Stewart

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The Twitter thing on The Daily Show tonight?

Yeah. That’s pretty much my perspective, too. I know it’s famous last words and all to say you’ll never do something, but I have no intention of joining Twitter, and I have a hard time imagining myself developing such an intention. Thanks to the magic of cross-posting tweets to LJ, I’ve seen a fair sampling of the medium, and I . . . just don’t care. The character limit is so low that the messages end up being meaningless to me; either they’re too small or too cryptic to engage my attention. And I don’t mean any of this as a diatribe against the people who have fun with it, but the truth is that I don’t read anybody’s tweets*, except on the rare occasion that it’s a link, and even then I rarely click on it because I have no idea what it’s about.

Maybe if I’d ever gotten interested in text-messaging, the medium would appeal more. But I don’t do much of that, either.

Yah. I guess I’m getting old or something, and you damn kids with your newfangled things just confuse me. In that case: get the hell off my lawn!

*There’s been one exception to this so far, and that was an extraordinary (and not particularly happy) circumstance.

0 Responses to “I love Jon Stewart”

  1. sartorias

    Same here.

  2. mrissa

    My mom said, “Maybe I’m missing out and dating myself by not getting into Twitter and texting,” and I said, “If you are, I am too.”

    I have enough trouble dealing with Facebook, where I feel meaningful interaction is actively discouraged but not prohibited.

  3. diatryma

    It seems like everyone I know finally joined Facebook last month, including me, and Twitter… Twitter is the kind of thing that’s only useful in large doses. There was an article, months back, about ambient awareness, knowing what your friends are up to by the bulk of the tweets rather than any individual content, more like a flock than a single bird. Except what I’ve read is flocks of pigeons circling buildings downtown over and over and over rather than the dusk-crows all heading east for the night and settling down.

    I use my Facebook status as a twitterthing. And then I send daffodils to everyone.

    • Marie Brennan

      . . . I really don’t want to be wading through dozens of tweets a day in hopes of having something like meaning on the other end.

      • diatryma

        Nor I. I can understand why people would, I think it’s a nifty idea for social networking, there’s that story in Firebirds (Rising?) about hive-girls, and I’d rather have dusk-crow tweets than pigeons.

  4. pathseeker42

    Yeah, haven’t gotten into Twitter, really.

    But the Daily Show! I can’t believe that congress-people a)know what Twitter is and b) decided to Tweet during Obama’s speech. Unbelieveable.

    • Marie Brennan

      Oh, there’s been a bunch of hilarious stories about the GOP shooting themselves in the feet with it, too. Like, one Republican representative (I can’t remember if it was state or national) tweeted about something that hadn’t been finalized, thus giving the Democrats time to arrange opposition to it.

      Probably some stories in the other direction, too, but I haven’t heard those.

      • jcberk

        State, in Virginia. Not entirely clear that that was what scuttled it, but it makes a good story.

  5. moonandserpent

    Twitter is fantastic, for what it’s designed to be used for. Most people who use it these days, sadly are using it as a web-based mini-facebook or a chat program. I hate people who use it as IM (too many constantly @ using folks) — even though I catch myself doing that as well.

    It’s AWESOME for quick and dirty Crowdsourcing. It’s also fantastic in that it’s extremely low-tech and multi-platform. That what has made it indespensible for firefighters in California, detainees in the middle east, and people hiding from terrorists in India. All you kneed is a cellphone that does basic SMS (read: any one still operating) and you’re in.

    And generally, many casual tweets don’t make sense outside of context — like I always say, I post them to my LJ for my archival purposes, not for anyone’s enjoyment, because no, my sixteenth of a brainstorming session with fifteen other people will not make sense.

    It’s an amazingly useful service if you have need for such a thing.

    • Marie Brennan

      The chat program thing — YES. It seems like there’s a conversation going on that I’m not privy to, and instead of getting interested I end up not caring.

      It totally makes sense that Twitter has a real and valuable use, but that said use is not the one most people are making of it. That pretty much explains everything I’ve seen about it.

  6. daobear

    Yeah, I find the tweets on lj to be annoying. It’s like static filling up my friends page. Argh.

  7. jcberk

    I love Twitter because it lets me see what my bubble (social media, marketing, internet in general) is caring about: it lets me find blog posts and listen in to conferences I wouldn’t otherwise be able to. Seeing the snippets on LJ doesn’t have any of that character (and I suspect it wouldn’t even if I read similar people in both places). But I’m all for ignoring tools that aren’t valuable – and I never got into texting either.

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