Stand Up, Twitter Captives!

OK. Here it is: I hate Twitter.

Or shall I say, I hate all the sitting Twitter requires. Not to mention how much I resent the sitting required by Blogger, Facebook, Linked In, my four e-mail accounts, and all the websites I visit many times each day in order to keep my finger on the pulse.

It's exhausting, all this sitting, and I simply cannot take it anymore. (Not to mention that despite all the sitting, my finger has never actually found the pulse.)


But to be perfectly honest, it's not just the sitting that's gotten my knickers in a twist (though too much sitting often has this effect).

It's the self-centeredness of it all.

"Ruth just used her son's toothbrush. Again."
"Ruth can't stop watching a video featuring cats on a treadmill."
"Ruth thinks you oughta check out this link pronto!"

Does anyone really care? And what's the use? How do my personal "tweets" or Facebook "status updates" make the world a better place?

So what if "Ruth picks up the equivalent of her weight in dog poop every three months" or "Ruth likes cheese"?

Ruth already knows these things, so what's the motivation to share them with the world (or, at least, with people she hasn't spoken to since the 7th grade)?

Are we nothing but a community of “Who’s” crying out in desperation, “We are here! We are here! We are here! We are HERE!”

Or, like flashers on a street corner, do we get some sort of secret thrill by offering up cheap peaks into our inner worlds?

“Ruth thinks it’s a little of both.” And incidentally, "Ruth is wearing nothing but her Snuggie."

Conjuring up 140 characters of relevant, insightful, witty, or just plain goofy information to “tweet” feels like, to me, an exercise in vanity. With each twitty tweet or static update, we are essentially declaring the equivalent of, “Pay attention to me.”

Then again, if our fingers are truly on the pulse – which means our asses are constantly on chairs – we might actually have something valuable to share. Some breaking news, in fact.

“Ruth just learned that social networking is an evil plot to cripple the human race with fat asses!”
"Ruth heard that Twitter is changing its name to Sitter."
"Ruth wants you to know that help is on the way."


And not a minute too soon.