There seems to be something about Twitter everywhere. Oprah began tweeting and garnered 34,000 followers in about a nanosecond. Here's a wickedly funny XKCD cartoon about Twitter... and the swine flu panic (click to enlarge):
It seems that everyone and their brother is into Twitter... so Twitter must be here to stay, right?Maybe not.
A week or so ago I was ferrying Younger Daughter back to campus after a dental appointment. Younger Daughter is a college freshman and a noted Facebook stalker. Every now and then I like to amaze her with my entirely superficial and incomplete knowledge of popular culture; another time recently, for example, I surprised her by knowing about Lady Goo-Goo. Or Lady Gaga. (OK, I have since forgotten.)
Anyway, our conversation on this trip back to school had drifted to the topic of text messages. Younger Daughter told me that she shows my text messages to all her friends. She told me that all her friends find my text messages screamingly funny.
(Why? Well... I do silly, absurd things... like capitalizing the first letter in each sentence... and spelling words correctly... and using punctuation. Totally radical, I know, but that's the kind of wild and crazy guy I am.)
My daughter's statement about how much her friends like my text messages seemed like an opportunity for me to trot out another popular culture reference. So I answered, "Maybe I should set up a Twitter account. I'd tweet my text messages to you and your friends could sign up to be followers."
An awkward silence followed.
"What?" my daughter asked, finally. "What's Twitter?"
I explained that it is a micro-blogging service... where people can advise of things that happen to them (in 140 characters or less) as many times a day as they want.
Younger Daughter was still silent.
"It's like changing your Facebook status, only people follow the changes on their cell phones."
"Oh. I see. It's so funny you know about Facebook status."
But not another word about Twitter.
If Younger Daughter doesn't think Tweeter is the greatest thing since indoor plumbing, I'd steer clear of any Twitter IPO... should there ever be one, that is.
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Here's the link to the original XKCD comic posted above. The artist, Randall Munroe, usually embeds an additional sarcastic remark in the original cartoon. The embedded remark does not copy when I lift the image... so I encourage you to visit the XKCD site.
7 comments:
Assuming I post about Twitter or Tea Partis Redux, I'll be the last.
I have drawn the line before Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. I've never gone to YouTube unless it happened to be linked in a forward to me or in a post.
I'm ashamed to admit that I text; but, damn, I get text from clients now. I do use caps and punctuation and no lol, ru, btw, etc.. Well, I do use that last one.
Parties.
i tweet. but not that often. ha ha ha
smiles, bee
tyvc
Oddly, a couple of days ago I explained to my 16 year old what Twitter was and he reacted the same way. So, did my 19 year old girlfriend a couple of months ago when she asked me what it was. They both said they didn't "get it".
Children never like parents getting involvolved in their activities.
I don't have time for Twitter. I can barely follow the internet around lately and I'm not using all my text messages up on twitter, ha ha.
Oh, and my ten year old loves "Poker Face", after seeing Lady Gaga on American Idol. Did you know she named herself after Radio Gaga, the Queen song, because she loves the theatricality they had? Well, now you know.
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