Against my better judgment, I’ve decided to become one of the millions of people to join Twitter.com. Before I sound like a complete hypocrite, my reasons are purely experimental; I just want to know what all the hype is about! Between all the twitting, tweeping, and twirps, Twitter has become more popular than President Obama himself. Needless to say, us non-twips are curious, so here’s an account of my Twitter joining adventure:
After finally accepting my tenth or so attempt at a user name, assuring me to “be tricky” with a password, and forcing me to search for fellow twitting friends, I am allowed to join (minimal pain so far). Next, I must choose from a selected number of nature-themed backgrounds while encountering various enthusiast lines of encouragement. Just like a mother dropping her child off for a first day of kindergarten, Twitter is there to hold my hand through this mildly painful and terrifying process.
At this point, I realize that Twitter has urged me to talk about myself while simultaneously stalking friends and/or celebrities. No wonder people like this site! Not only do I get to talk about myself almost as much as I want (*will explore this point later*) I now know where Oprah is going on vacation, and what her private chefs cooked her for lunch. Twitter is just what our lazy, narcissistic, celebrity-worshiping country needs: a web site that does it for us.
However, I soon discovered a bane to Twitter’s existence: users abusing their tweeting power by telling us each action they are doing as it’s happening. If you’re not that interesting for me to be hanging out with in the first place, chances are I fancy reading your plans about as much as I’d want to talk war tactics with Hitler.
NEWSFLASH: “there is a difference between over-sharing and awesome-sharing,” (as our fearless leader, Kelsey, once told me).
No Pete, we don’t want to know you’re grilling on your back deck … we want to read your witty banter, click on the link to the article featuring the new Tim Burton movie you showed us, or watch a not lame featured Youtube.com video (these things all qualify as “awesome-sharing”).
Now that I’ve ranted about the bad parts, there is one feature of which I’d like to shake the inventor of Twitter’s hand for: the word count cut-off. It’s Twitter’s virtual human mute button! You know no one cares what you’re talking about when you are cut off by the 140-character limit!
I wish I had that kind of power in real life, to tell people when they’ve worn out their talking/typing welcome. Obviously, the next step is to extend this feature to content. In addition to a character limit, there should be an “annoyance limit” feature. For example, tweets such as: “goin 2 hang w/ my gurls. goin 2 b a g8 day!!!!!!! 
XOXO” or “I thInk mY wOrld Is cOmIng tO An End AftEr nOt gEttIng nEw shOEs” would just disappear.
You will try to type it, but Twitter will anticipate the harsh judgments you will receive after typing such things and save you from the embarrassment. (Plus, they are saving us all the headache of attempting to read it.)
You have a whole keyboard. Use it.
On a final note, if any of you fellow twits would like to view awesome-share in its finest form, you are welcome to follow Kelsey, Karen or myself on Twitter. We only share the best in bootleg Alice in Wonderland previews and Apple Tablet mock-ups, I swear.
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Bethaney Wallace is a English Literature and Creative Writing Major at K-State. When she’s not ranting for The Social Robot, Bethaney is co-copy editor at the K-State Collegian and attempting to finish her last semester of school.
Image courtesy of: http://nhokanson.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/
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