 |
| The ever growing fascination with Twitter. |
Ah the good old days. The days in which we were all foolish and naive teenagers (yes even me...) airing our dirty laundry on the much loved website that was MySpace. I for one admit having no real life when I was a 13 year old, listening to shameful emo music and wearing brightly coloured clothes like I had a clue. Therefore you can imagine my elevated joy when MySpace came about as I probably thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Oh how indeed my young heart was then fickle ... I then became enraptured and virtually seduced in a matter of years by MySpace's arch nemesis Facebook. Making profiles layouts, choosing profile songs and posting bulletins was a thing of the past ... now I derived fun from checking into locations, joining groups and liking somebody's status (even if it is something as mundane as "just had a shower LOL"). But Mark Zuckerberg, I must warn you that temptation is yet again calling out to me in a different disguise, literally learning into my ear and "twittering" away as it were. Thousands of people across the world are as I speak are abandoning Facebook like they would a lazy and unemployed husband who forgets your wedding anniversary and venturing towards more passionate liaisons; the sexy 'bird' that is Twitter.
Now I always said I never would. I always promised fidelity to my social networking husband Facebook. I dipped my hand into the Twitter nib and on first impression thought it pointless and tedious;You can't even edit your background, you can't like people's status, there is a character limit on your tweets, this is the worst thing ever man, even worse than unsliced bread! Of course being a qualified noob at all things technological, I didn't have a clue what to tweet, I didn't really know what it was for and to top it all off I had no close friends I knew on Twitter. So basically I just looked like a sad socially inept loser who now stalked celebrities. Yet lately friends, family and businesses have all been using the social networking site as a platform for information and witty repertoire, elevating its reputation and making me feel like I'm missing out. Missing out big time. Now using a hashtag (#) in a sentence suddenly makes that sentence x100 times funnier. Saying things such as "just getting into bed and watch a film mwah" was considered status suicide in Facebook terms and would guarantee that all your "friends" think you a boring and bragging moron (And of course the classic ... "Why can't I sleep?" Wow that was so worth posting as a status, it is a obviously a very big deal as it effects my life on a massive magnitude. LOOK you can't sleep because you're blatantly on the internet you fool, with your eyes wide open typing on your computer/smartphone, so you know that may be the magical reason why...) BUT in the wonderful wonderland that is Twitter everybody is getting away with status murder, posting really useless and pointless crap about themselves. As well as that topics, people, places, proverbs are "trending." Trending you say?! I am a young person, I like modern things. I like trends. I want to be trendy. I don't want to miss out on all the virtual banter, I want to give off the illusion that I am some self important social butterfly!
So now I confess by Jove, I have succumbed to the microblogging allure that is Twitter. Don't get me wrong, I'm still on Facebook, I have to stay on there like any good passive housewife for the sake of the kids. But nobody can deny me my "twittle" bit on the side (evidently no pun intended...) Personally for me one of the contributing factors to my virtual adultery was the whole "Timeline" profile change on Facebook. This basically consists of Facebook being an awkward old control freak woman categorising your life history into different years in the formation of an ugly timeline on your profile like you are some Ancient Egyptian or Roman or something. Why complicate things Zuckerberg? We don't need or want a This Is Your Life life story every time we want to visit someone's Facebook profile. We just want the old simplicity of randomly checking up on friends profiles, seeing what they are up to, browsing at their new pictures or just generally using the site as a mechanism to poke fun at the the disgusting creatures of society who we stead-right refuse to formally "add as a friend."
But alas things are looking up as more people are refusing to have their life stories splurged across Facebook like they are in an issue of Heat magazine (Gemma has just gone out to get a pint of milk in H&M baggy sweatpants ... Oh. Em. Gee. Get the fashion police...) On Twitter I have an adequate amount of followers, it is easier to make friends on Twitter than it is on Facebook ("following" someone doesn't mean they have to "follow" you back in return, they are less formal than friend requests, so weird and sleazy stalkers of the world do not despair... there is hope!) AND I can justify my own pointless tweets as ways of self promotion for my own "writing" rather than being a sad loser who lives on the computer and needs others to "like" their status in order to feel accepted within the "high" circles of modern society. But is there really a difference between the two social networks? Are they just as both as bad as each other for controversy, procrastination/not getting work done, conflicting relationships, airing dirty laundry and turning everyone into pompous annoying shrews? Hmm. Probably. But until the next piece of social networking meat comes along... I'll happily devour this one.
0 comments:
Post a Comment