Steve Ballmer Online

December 11, 2007

 

 

I’d first heard about Twitter from my co-workers.

The boys at the office who were in charge of being on top of the latest internet trends, which I already despised, had begun talking about some kind of “Twitter” a lot in their day-to-day speech. At first, I thought little of this colloquial speech, simply thinking they were referring to some variety of bird-like object, but soon after I found out it was an internet service.

Let’s get this clear right off the bat: Twitter is a retarded name for anything not relating to birds. Even with bird accessories, I wouldn’t buy a gay little feeder or something called a Twitter.

I went on to investigate. This “Twitter” was not only being used by my co-workers, but it seemed to be updated by them every 15 minutes or so. What the hell?

What does Twitter’s own website say about what the hell this thing does? On the front page I’m met with this informative caption:

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

What the fuck? These guys were logging onto this website that had no other purpose than to tell your mother you would be late for dinner because you’re going to catch a matinee of Fisting Firemen 9 after work? Like seriously, who the fuck needs to know that?

Let’s delve a little more deeply into Twitter’s informative Web 2.0 blurbs about its reason to exist. The “why?”:

Why? Because even basic updates are meaningful to family members, friends, or colleagues—especially when they’re timely.

Eating soup? Research shows that moms want to know.
Running late to a meeting? Your co–workers might find that useful.
Partying? Your friends may want to join you.
You know what? Updates are meaningful to family and friends, I will concur. But not updates every 10 goddamned minutes, about random shit nobody cares about. There’s a reason I don’t tell my mom what I’m doing every 15 minutes, and it’s not just a question of time. The goes for my friends, too. I don’t want to know what they’re doing when they’re not hanging out with me. That’s they’re time, and frankly if this keeps up I think we’re all going to know a little more than we should.

But I guess I could just be picking on one feature of Twitter, and there’s plenty more service it provides. I mean, as much as I hate Facebook, I use that thing, along with every other hipster on the planet, and that has an “update” feature everyone feels the need to use.

No. Wrong again. That’s all the fucking thing does. You go on there, you type in what you’re doing, and when you did it. You can even do it from your phone, and get charged for telling people you’re going to eat a greaseball burger at Mc fucking Donalds even after you told everyone you’re going on a diet for the past two years. You weigh 350 fucking pounds, stop eating that burger every damn time you’re at YYZ.

You see? Already this starts a chain of events that leads to my blood boiling, and I didn’t even ask for it. Only bad things come of this.

This, along with a multitude of other useless services gives the population an illusion that they are important. Well, there’s a reason they aren’t making the news: because nobody fucking cares. Nobody cares! Instead of inspiring people to go out and do something that would be worthy of “twittering” (Oh, I’m sure that term has already been coined), it’s making people think that other people care about their boring, menial, everyday lives.

And now, dear readers, we come to our ultimate paradox: The people who use Twitter are the very people who have the least to say or do.

If you honestly have the time or inclination to go onto this service (and I use the term loosely) to tell people you’re going to buy more quilted toilet paper, you need to find more things to occupy your time. Or at least more important things.

Because the bottom line is, nobody fucking cares.