Even though I don't see myself as someone who's necessarily an expert or a fan of social media in general, I'm not really that much against it. In fact, I happen to use it relatively frequently too.
For example, I do have a facebook account - which I try to update almost every single day. I share news stories, music, and upload pictures that mostly deal with food or cats and dogs. I 'spend' a lot of time on facebook every day, perhaps a bit too much to be honest.
I also have this blog that I have tried to keep going the last four years. I rant and rave here about television and television writing in general. I have posted some of my scripts here and I have also done some investigative journalism too.
So I think it's pretty safe to say that I don't have anything against social media per se. I'm not someone who thinks that I'm better than the rest who may or may not use the networking sites frequently. Using social media in moderation is perfectly okay in my opinion.
In any case, based on that one might expect that I wouldn't have anything against an application like Twitter either. After all, like facebook and blogger its function is to share stuff and to connect with people that you don't always know personally.
Nevertheless, I'm not a fan of twitter and tweeting. I don't see any scenario in which I personally would start using it even as a tertiary tool. I just don't see myself using it in order to connect or to share stuff with people that I'd like to reach.
Of course, probably the biggest problem that I have with twitter is that your posts or "tweets" are limited in size. As far as I know, you can only send messages that have a size of 140 characters or less. This is just completely - for the lack of a better word - ridiculous.
You can't say anything genuinely meaningful using only two short sentences or less. In my opinion this restriction will just, well, cheapen you as a human being. Even though you might be able to reach more people, tweeting narrows down our ability to express ourselves.
Tweeting really does dumb us down which is why we don't see good things about twitter in the news. Usually twitter related news means high profile fails and twitter wars: celebrities either fighting with other celebrities or fighting with regular people. That is just pathetic.
In my opinion Twitter almost perfectly captures the vanity of this current adhd rapid fire society. It has Orwellian newspeak written all over it (lesser vocabulary, hashtags). Twitter has the potential to make us dumber and lazier. It doesn't encourage us to think enough.
When it comes to me, I personally want to have the freedom to see if I might have something genuine to say. I want to give myself a chance to succeed (or to fail). With tweets it's really hard to succeed unless your definition of success is hobnobbing with other usually vain people.
In any case, "real" writing is most of the time hard work. Coming up with anything meaningful isn't that easy. It takes a lot of work and spending few seconds writing and reading short sentences (tweets) usually won't get you anywhere.
Of course, probably the biggest problem that I have with twitter is that your posts or "tweets" are limited in size. As far as I know, you can only send messages that have a size of 140 characters or less. This is just completely - for the lack of a better word - ridiculous.
You can't say anything genuinely meaningful using only two short sentences or less. In my opinion this restriction will just, well, cheapen you as a human being. Even though you might be able to reach more people, tweeting narrows down our ability to express ourselves.
Tweeting really does dumb us down which is why we don't see good things about twitter in the news. Usually twitter related news means high profile fails and twitter wars: celebrities either fighting with other celebrities or fighting with regular people. That is just pathetic.
In my opinion Twitter almost perfectly captures the vanity of this current adhd rapid fire society. It has Orwellian newspeak written all over it (lesser vocabulary, hashtags). Twitter has the potential to make us dumber and lazier. It doesn't encourage us to think enough.
Of course I'm not saying that tweeting is always a bad thing. But unless you're giving out links to some other articles or sending for example information about premiere dates or schedules, I don't understand the point of tweeting at all.
In any case, "real" writing is most of the time hard work. Coming up with anything meaningful isn't that easy. It takes a lot of work and spending few seconds writing and reading short sentences (tweets) usually won't get you anywhere.
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