I have posted about twitter before but it has come to my attention that twitter has seriously affected my blog here as well as your reading experience.
In a nation, and maybe a world that has the attention span of a 140 letter sound bite, twitter is contributing even further to the dumbing down of the populace.
Take our own Kayden Kross for instance. Kayden is a gifted writer, for her tender years she has a depth and an understanding of how to write interesting prose that is truly unique. But she no longer writes her poetry (that was published I might add) and she rarely writes here. But daily she posts sound bites on twitter that would make for wonderfully light and amusing columns.
Like these:
” I’m paying bills. This is why I should never have lost my last ATM card. Nothing is automatic anymore. Life is hard.”
“I like how they didn’t photoshop the smog out of the ad for Pasadena at the airport. It’s edgy and dangerous.”
“Fun fact: Philly has detectable levels of 56 different drugs in it’s water supply. I’ll be featuring there in July.”
“Holy crap. Nancy Grace makes me mad. What does she do exactly? Besides sensationalize crime…”
“I never realized there were so many strip clubs in St. Louis. And they serve alcohol. This is a very evolved state. CA is behind the times.”
“It’s my first time at bob evans. I came for the coffee but I’ll stay for the slow tragedy that is the people watching experience here.”
“They serve apple pie fries here with caramel dipping sauce. They should be forced to pay directly into the medicare fund.”
“My hotel room smells like piss. My option is to switch to a smoking room. Hung jury.”
“I stole the hotel’s master key set to get into my room last night. They didn’t notice so I finally called to tell them. I’m amazed.”
“I was just told it was against company policy to take the key. I wonder what the policy is on leaving it on the desk for 1 hr with no clerk”
“Crowning achievement: Someone just emailed me to let me know he jerked it to my porn at the fertility clinic and now his wife is pregnant.”
These are all very recent posts. Most of them are worthy of further thought, and commentary she can take the relatively mundane act of dining at Bob Evans and make it an interesting experience, but instead she gets a great idea and simply lets it die on the vine.
I could see it now
Ernest Hemmingway twittering ” Life is a lot like fishing” instead of writing “The Old Man and the Sea”
Herman melville tweets “class and social status, good and evil, and the existence of gods are all exemplified as an obsession with killing a big whale”
John Steinbeck tweets “The best-laid plans of mice and men/often go awry”
I think you get the point.
Kayden, come back from the abyss, we miss you.
11 Responses
I prefer to leave comments rather than write lately. Mainly because I can do it in under 140 characters….
Another one lost to the literary equivalent of McDonalds.
In other words: When one writes not entirely for the sincere expression of the subject, but also for the purpose of creating a more psychologically-captivating image than mere appearance could create, the self-deception that it’s only the former, and not at all the latter, withers away.
If she didn’t take her clothes off, reading about Bob Evan’s would be as palatable to the average person as reading a random undergrad’s creative writing assignments. Amusing, likely – but altogether, undeniably irrelevant and avoidable. Not quite the case when the reader falls for the never explicit, always insinuated, suggestion that by reading and “understanding,” he is increasing his chances with the author.
I’m not so sure look at humorists like Lewis Grizzard ( a personal fav of mine) and P J O’Roarke and Dave Barry even Jenny McCarthy
They write about mundane things that happen in daily life largely, but they have the ability to use words to make it funny and interesting and usually poignant, with the exception of McCarthy they always kept their clothing on…Thank God
Mike–
Apparently, you don’t really “get” Twitter and neither does Ms. Kross.
Yeah, it may have started out as an ego-boosting, self-importance driven, social media site where users post the oh-so fascinating stuff they’re currently doing in 140 words or less. You know, stuff like, “Just dropped a sewer bass and realized I’m outa toilet paper.” (Thought you’d like a fish-related example, Mikey.) But for many, Twitter has become a business media tool, an information media tool, a learning media tool, and more.
I mostly follow photographers and photography related Twitterers. I also follow Twitter users like Smithsonian and others that might provide great links to stuff I’m personally interested in seeing. What most of the Twits I follow (or those who follow me) often do is post links to sites and articles and so much more that I’m very interested in having a look at. It’s also been a great business networking tool. I’m in contact with people all over the world who have like interests as me (mostly photography) and, believe it or not, I’ve scored a couple of shooting gigs–commercial shooting gigs–as a result of my Twitter experience. Something, I might add, that never happened via my MySpace page… which I deleted a few months back. (MS is truly a waste of time and cyberspace… unless you’re looking to get laid, I guess.) Twitter, i.e., my twittering, has also increased the traffic to my blog, quite significantly!
So, before you go off all faux-smart hillbilly on everyone–sometime I think you’re to hillbillies what Sasha Grey tries to be to porn stars–maybe you should take a closer look at this currently popular thing called Twitter.
Hate to say it Mike but JimmyD is on to something here.
I explain it to you on Friday.
Oh of course I get it but for every JimmyD who uses twitter for business theres 1000 people who use it to spam herbal viagra or whatever and 10,000 people who use it to say “Look at me Im an attention whore” without even having to put any effort into it.
how many writing gigs do you suppose Ms Kross (whom I adore like family) has gotten from her twits?
and therein lies my point.
Blasting Twitter for the spam or innocuous, self-important, drivel many of its users Tweet is like shooting the messenger. I’m just saying.
OK you have a point it like blaming guns for the way criminals use them….sort of.
But what has happened to Kayden is a crime
Im just sayin….
@DirtyBob,
Thanks! I think.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had contacted the social networking service Twitter to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that would have cut daytime service to Iranians
f*ckin ay. twitter has some value after all.