How Twitter is Destroying Your Mind

July 27, 2008

How Twitter is Destroying Your Mind

It’s called parsing. It means that you cannot think of anyone or anything over 140 characters long. Each letter, number, punctuation point and space counts as a character. Twitter rules as well as destroys.

As you probably have heard around the coffee shop, Twitter is now being blamed for causing America to go mindless. Buy hey, come on, how can Twitter be responsible for the pre-Twitter status quo?

Blame is easy because Twitter is a newbie on the street corner of interactive Web 2.0 sites. One simply logs onto Twitter and it’s free expression as long as it’s 140 characters or less.

Now realistically it is not fair, though admittedly very convenient, to blame America’s total lack of attention and focus on Twitter. It’s not Twitter’s fault this is an election year.

Twitter is simply software that just sits there until one enters their 140 characters or less, regardless of who is running for President.

But it’s all worth it in the end because the Twitter community has a steady stream of new members; many of whom just might become your Followers. Followers are a type of fan and you are the Followed. So to speak or rather twitter.

The truth is, like many Web 2.0 unwritten “givens” if one Follows you, you should respectfully Follow them back.

Whether you actually do Follow or not is not really the point, it’s Web 2.0 courtesy to respond in kind. Be nice or leave.

Of course one should morally Follow back out of courtesy so that more folks don’t jump off the Golden Gate Bridge; imagine the trauma of Twitter rejection.

But just because one Follows, doesn’t actually mean one follows, in Twitter terms of course.

There’s no getting around it. How truly embarrassing when one goes back over the archives!

Some poor soul thinks they are carrying on some sort of dialogue with you and it’s clear you are taking off wherever you wish totally ignoring them and everything else: my gosh, what must they all be thinking? Or rather, twittering?

Are they somehow subliminally twittering with me? One eventually starts to wonder: what is really going down here?

But whatever you do, don’t lose control because you committed a downright ugly Twitter indiscretion. You know, something you are afraid might pop up on you-know-who’s Google search.

But if you do sin, one of the Twitter strategies for covering up your indiscretion is simply moving on. Or in other words, bury it in the archives.

Twittering away with goofy and silly nonsense does wonders for burying the Twitter where you called your boss an infected scab. And worse.

But no worries, in the end Twitter is all so stylishly superficial anyway. If there is any Twitter style that has emerged, it is the cutesy superficial style.

That is probably because every California valley girl twitters night and day but of course that’s how they talk as well as Twitter.

If you like Search, Twitter has a good search function but with billions of Twitters it’s like getting 10,000 hits on a search.

And since so many Twitters are twatter, it’s sort of like ‘what’s the point?’ One can only assume some sort of alternative self therapy involved with these Twitter search freaks…

Which seems strange since the original idea was for your friends to know what you are thinking and doing every minute of the day.

It seems even stranger if you are married, but remember you too were once young and for some reason were once interested in those sorts of things.

Besides, how important can your thoughts while doing laundry really be?

The answer is not really important at all and that best describes the real strength of Twitter; it’s artificial and not very important at all.

It’s contrived except for those that already think in Twitter. So for those folks relatively speaking, they are twittering but really not in Twitter terms of course.

If it sounds too complex it’s really not. Twittering requires only superficial usage of scattered parts of the brain and very quickly you will notice numerous Twitterers that do not express any sort of thought whatsoever.

They have a hope that someday a miracle will happen.

It’s sort of like “hi, I’m here trying to think, not much yet in terms of results but will keep on trying and keep you posted or rather twittered should I actually think something.”

That’s because recent research showed some 87% of we Twitterers have less than a two second attention span.

Call it parsing or call it scatterbrained but the reality is a society hooked on Twitter and Sudoku is a society with way too much free time on its hands. And that spells big trouble.

But on the upside, even though we really aren’t important, we can impress other unimportant people that we are in fact important because we Twitter.

In global terms, we should be thankful. Twitter is showing us a very important and revealing aspect of our humanity: a mind is not necessary for self expression. Or, as we say out here in California, “No es necessario!”

So go ahead, feel free to exercise your mindless self expression. Go ahead, Twitter me, I dare ya!

Jack Deal twitters under the avatar jackddeal as well as own JD Deal Local Search Marketing, Salinas and Santa Cruz, California 831-457-8806. Related articles, twitters, quotes, ideas, strategies, tactics and tips can be found at .

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