Wednesday, November 25, 2009

i AM aware of my hypocrisy.

For months now I have been annoyed with this new 'technology' called Twitter. On the surface, I hate everything about twitter. I'm told that it will bring much in the future, but as to what that much consist of, I cannot understand.


Much like blogs and facebook, it was explained to me that this was the future and I'd be left behind and that I was a luddite and that it was a new technology... that there was no limit to the communication possibilities.


Well, I did not believe this. I did not believe it about blogs and I did not believe it about facebook. However, you will now see that after long ignoring this blog thing of mine, I have added a new feature to it. It is my twitter account.


The thing is I don't believe the hype. I don't believe it anymore than the blog that I am posting this on. I don't like the word blog, facebook or (sigh here) twitter. Now it is 'tweet', before it was 'blog' or 'facebook'. At least facebook is still underlined in red when I spell check, but we already have words for these things. Other than being able to be ignored by more people than merely roommates, a blog is just a journal. Facebook is just your yearbook permanently being signed by old friends.... a never ending class yearbook. Tweet is the sound birds make. What you really mean to say is sentence.


The blog hasn't really changed my life in any profound way, other than to be an excuse as to why I don't have a proper website of my own creation. I don't worry about it. I certainly don't post everyday, and I have not received the promised book deals and fame and so forth. It does give me the added benefit of having a soapbox to stand on without the danger of public humiliation. Like everything else on the internet... it is virtual and thus harmless.


I have also not received anything from facebook. I have found some long lost buddies, but other than accepting my friendship, we have no real friendship now. Facebook did provide me with a headache in the form of a now former friend who hired me, underpaid me, and then decided to yell at me. We are not facebook friends anymore. I would hardly call that progress.


So now we get to the crux; Twitter. The Tweet.


See, first off, it isn't a new 'technology'. It is a new program. To me technology isn't merely some code, it is a real thing, like the wheel, the plane, the lighter, the computer... not something not real that is already on the computer, but now looks pretty and everyone is doing it.


And somehow typing short 140 character bits of trivial fodder that is running through my brain is going to change the world or magically make me money? I'm about to prove how it won't... at all. Just watch how pointless the whole exercise is as you sign up to follow me and I let you know what little I can contribute to your day by knowing even less important things about me than that which I bring up in my blog.


By the way, I only have a twitter account because I wanted free software that makes your voice sound like a squirrel and you could only get it if you had a twitter account.


See? I'm a whore just like everyone else. But can you blame me? It's a squirrel voice.

3 comments:

Jodi said...

for the purpose of getting a free ap that makes your sound like a squirrel is the best reason i have ever heard for setting up a twitter account. ever.

Tom Weston said...

thank you.

I thought so too.

Carrie said...

The blog has given you a free coffee and the director of your current favourite movie stopped by and left a comment. So, you haven't had a book deal or an interview with a CBC personality, but you have had coffee and kudos.

And the app that makes the squirrel voice has already provided us hours of entertainment, so twitter has benefited you as well.

Your subversion may very well make you a twitter superstar. watch out, mister.