The Second to Last Word

 Keep Your Tweets To Yourself

I haven’t tweeted once in my life, but I’m sick of hearing about it already. What once may have been the cool way of letting a hundred people know that you’re about to go mow your lawn now has the feel of a used-to-be-fresh means of communicating. So yesterday, like two-way pagers. And AOL.

To be honest, I think tweeting jumped the shark long before ultrahip CNN got into a Twitter match against superdown Ashton Kutcher. Back when politicians started live-tweeting responses to the president’s demi-State of the Union address, Twitter had already taken on all the cool of your mom getting a tattoo.

I imagine, I hope, twitterers are ultimately headed for the social networking retirement home that’s the current residence of Second Life and MySpace.

But my real issue with social networking sites isn’t their faddishness.

It’s the hypocrisy that goes with them.

We claim to be a nation of people who take our privacy very seriously. Just mention the idea of warrantless wiretaps and expect to get hit up with a congressional investigation.

But give somebody an avatar and a URL, and he can’t tweet, post or hyperlink enough personal information about himself to as many people as possible.

Seriously, does valuable broadband space need to be taken up with announcements in that creepy Facebook third-person-ese that “John is enjoying two-for-one margaritas with the rest of the IT Team at T.G.I. Fridays”?

Where is the expectation of privacy anymore? Or, more correctly, where is the expectation that people will keep their private nonsense to themselves so that those of us who still like to communicate personal information with one person at a time don’t have to get caught up in somebody else’s e-mail circles or listen to their one-sided cell phone conversations?

No, I don’t know what’s hipper; to Facebook or to Twitter. I just know for me, personally, discretion never went out of style.

So is Twitter Facebook-Lite?

I guess I don’t know where Carson Daly is since I don’t follow his every move on Twitter.

So many people are twittering these days (tweets?) that I almost feel left out. Ok, not really.

I keep hearing that famous people are on Twitter and that they actually reach out to some of their fans (followers) personally.  I guess some do and I would also guess that some might have even hired a “Tweet-Assistant” to keep up with the ultra craziness of this whole mess and in my unrequested opinion the erosion of privacy as we once knew it.

I have been tempted to join, but I doubt I ever will.  The most common “phrase” I hear from people when I ask about Twitter is…

“Who wants to know when or how someone wipes their ass?”

Twitter, from my inexperienced position, is just a watered down version of Facebook.  Think about it, I am sure you have.  Remove the apps and all the “non-essentials” and all you are left with is the Status Update.  What is a Status Update if not Twitter?  So is Twitter Facebook-Lite?

I know, I have not signed up for Twitter so I should just keep my *&^$% mouth shut. This reminds me of when Titanic came out and I hated it before even seeing it.  Then I watched it. (I didn’t need to because it was pure %$# anyway.)  But it did confirm what personally didn’t need confirmation.

Do I really need to sign up for Twitter to see for myself? I am not convinced that it will be necessary.

I hear about actors/actresses/celebrities who freely give out their Twitter handles or code names or whatever they are called.  I guess famous people want to feel a little normal and connected beyond the small/big screen to their fans.  And that is fine I guess.  I mean, I don’t really care to follow Ashton or Demi or any television personalities.  I don’t feel like we would have enough in common to actually warrant a faux-friendship.  What could I speak to Ashton about?  He pitches Nikon and I own one?  What could we possibility talk about?  That fact that we both like older women? 

Okay.  Ashton, read my blog!   

I am not trying to belittle those who follow celebrities and actually correspond with them.  I will admit that I share the same emotional reaction when I write an email to authors of books I have read and they actually take the time to send me a response.  Case and point? Dr. Bart Ehrman and Paulo Coelho.  I wrote to both of these authors never expecting a response. They responded. I have actually exchanged a few emails with them both.  Not as much fun as knowing what they did 3 minutes ago, but they entertained my questions and replied. 

So. Where is Carson Daly?

Tell you what. If you message your leader Carson Daly and tell him about my blog and he visits the blog and leaves a comment and then tells all of his followers to come check it out…then I might consider signing up for Twitter.

Okay, maybe.  Probably not.

I will admit that I got as far the Twitter home page. And the video. And then I watched the video with the Japanese Subtitles.

I will wait for Carson Daly.

DISCLAIMER:  This BLOG contains references to a public person whose name is part of the American English language lexicon.  The views of this BLOG do not represent the state of mind, feelings, point of view of said public person.  Any mention of any other person is strictly to be interpreted as mere coincidence and does not reflect any actual events and basically creative “poetic license” to make a point.  The person has been made up entirely.  Any similarities to any living person, past or present, is purely coincidental.  Any allusion is an illusion.

UPDATE:  No word from Carson or any other celebrity.

I am not sure where to start.

It started with Friendster. I got an email from a buddy telling me how great this site is and how cool it is and how it is sooooo not like classmates.com. And it’s free! Okay, free you say? I signed up.

I fiddled around with it a bit. It was kind of boring. People were not into the whole social-networking-over-the-internet thing. The networking-age was in its infancy and people were avoiding it like a Sony Beta.

Then came MySpace. Yoohoo! I am friends with the band! I became a whore to all these up and coming bands. I made it to the top. I felt like Cameron Crowe’s character in Almost Famous. I was hob-knobbing with soon to be famous people. Then I noticed actual famous people were on the site. James Gandolfini, Brad Pitt, J-Lo, and even William Hung. Way cool. The famous were getting in on the action. WAIT. Tony Soprano sitting in front of his 19″ flat screen LCD in his underpants “friending” bands? Hmmm…. Yeah. Don’t think so.

MySpace started to fill up and fill up quickly. Seems those Friendsters jumped ship and landed on this new social-network. It was growing fast. Then I noticed something kind of disturbing. My neighbor’s dog sent me a “friend request”. A dog? C’mon. I fell for the whole Tony Soprano thing, but a dog?

Yeah. Thanks.

But no thanks.

I stopped showing up. I changed my daily ritual of checking to see how well my “pimped-up” site was coming along…

Someone mentioned something about a new site. It was “closed” and members had to know members to get it. It was totally “real”. You could only use your real name and none of that “flash” found on MySpace. Cool.

Let me in.

Hello (echo comes back). Hello (echo comes back). I think you get my point. Since I couldn’t get in I suffered a few more grueling months with my new “friend” next door. I seemed to have lots in common with the breed. We both liked whisky (notice the missing “e”?), we both like to sniff crotches…oh wait…this is a family show.

Then I heard somewhere that Facebook was open to the public. OPEN! Yes!

I signed up. Probably about the same time that cover on newsweek came out…

Okay. So things were going well. My friend list was growing with people I actually knew for a change. This was nice. I was talking to people I had not seen or spoken to in a very long time (way before Friendster even). I was hooked. Something addicting about the damn thing. It’s like being in a relationship. You figure the pros outweigh the cons and stick with it. Right? I know you know what I mean. Application requests anyone? Who wants to send a “bitch-slap”? At one point I had Michael Jackson thrown at me. WTF!?! Since when are you allowed to THROW the one-glove wonder? Hmmm….

Smells like Teen Spirit.

Then I started noticing something “familiar”. A certain scent. A new BREED. Ah, not again! Yes.

Dogs, cats, birds…all had a facebook page.

Done.

It took me, over the course of a few days, about 4 hours to “clean” up my Facebook page.

I deleted all emails. All posts. All status updates. Everything. Every single notification. I even began to “weed” my facebook. At the peak of my popularity I had 231 friends! (The fictitious dog above has more friends!) I started removing “friends”. It was nice that Facebook told me that the people would not be notified. That was a relief. Phew. Thanks. (sarcasm)

So now, if you should find yourself looking up my facebook page you will see NOTHING. Well, almost nothing. Of all of my friends, only 1 picked up the phone to tell me that there was something wrong with my “page”. One. Uno. Un. одно. ένας.

So, if someone asks you why I left the scene…tell them it’s for the dogs.

EDIT: I closed my account. I am OUT!

As always…YOU HAVE THE LAST WORD.