To be perfectly truthful, the war in Iraq is getting so much nastier, so much faster, that a lot of things that I would normally post about seem even more trivial than usual. But today I figured "what the hell" and here's a post about something completely trivial for your snacking pleasure.
Just to start off, I love the name "Twitter". It's very descriptive of what the hype is actually all about: an app that allows one to see who's on line right and what they are up to. I'm a "don't knock 'til you try it" type and if it's still around in about 12 years, I'm sure I'll be using to see what Chloe's up to after school. But all that ranting and raving about how awful/amazing it is cracks me up. Let's all take a second shall we? You've just spent about 10 minutes (or 2 hours, it depends) setting up a little page at Twitter. Good for you! Now all of your friends can aquire instant knowledge of every minute of your day. Whether you want to tell the world you are having intestinal issues with your lunch is entirely up to you, but at least if someone really cares they'll know. Maybe your mom. To be fair, there are those of us who are hard at work, trying to find ways to make Twitter-ing actually productive, but it comes across as a similar act to trying to walk a cat on a leash.
Remember when AOL had instant on-line messaging? (The back in the day kind, circa 97) I was on line one day and suddenly this little window popped up, blocking what I was doing. It was my boyfriend's (now husband's)nephew. "Hi Uncle Chris! How are you?" It wouldn't go away until I answered so I yelled over to Chris: "Hey! Your nephew wants to know how you're doing!" "OK!" he yelled back. I typed in "OK" and tried to go about my business. Then another window popped up. "What are you up to?" and so on and so forth ad nauseum. I was having an online conversation with a 10 year old boy and I wasn't even wearing an ankle bracelet.
I guess the beauty of Twitter is that you don't have to answer people back. It's the kind of app that Andy Warhol would have come up with if he hadn't had such an overworked nurse and had taken up software programming. I'll file it under "sounds like fun, but I'm really too busy right now." I think it would be fun though, if you could somehow get some Al Qaeda folks to sign up for it. "AlSaid69, Whassup?" " Heading out to the souk with my bros" "Have a blast! ;^)Json"
So, there you have it, a post about nothing.
