Self-deprecation is worth its weight in smoldering phoenix-ashes and baby unicorn tears.
Published on May 20, 2008 By SanChonino In Websites

Some of you may remember when I posted a couple of weeks back about whether or not you use Twitter, and that I had started to do so.  While the 'community outpouring' was less than I hoped, it was basically what I expected.

So I've been using Twitter for two or three weeks now.  And it's been pretty cool.  I mean, it's nice to hear what all these different people are up to.  There's a pretty cool group of people hanging out around there, and I'd encourage more of you to start one up - it's easier than doing entire blog posts.

The hard part for me, though, has been deciding what to post on my Twitter site.  I started with very Twitter-esque posts, such as:

  Every time I go a few days, maybe a couple of weeks without listening to Neurosis, I forget how life-changing their music is.

Or:

Saul Williams is weird, but this CD is pretty much great.

And then I moved to more generic things, re-tweeting lots of people or commenting on their tweets.  Which, while all fine and dandy, it gets kind of confusing trying to follow a conversation jumping from one Twitter page to another.

However, lately I've decided to take my tweets in an entirely different direction.

You see, on Twitter you have 140 characters to tell the world what you want to tell it.  And what have I decided to tell the world?

I want to describe the world around me.  I want to turn every tweet I post into a mini-vision of what I see, what I feel, what I experience.  Such as:

The rain pelts upon my window, eliciting wet, cold dreams of sunrises and blue skies . . .

Or:

The night falls, descending like a thick blanket upon the city, enveloping and encasing everything in darkness and cold.

Or:

Finally, the sun makes its fugitive appearance through the miles of stormclouds, kissing my cheeks and bringing warm greetings.

Ultimately, it sounds like it's going to be mighty boring for most people.  But you know what?  Screw 'em.  I blog for you all - I tweet for myself.

If other people decide to enjoy it, yay.  If not?  Sorry, Charlie.

I hope that other people have chosen to use Twitter in this way, too.  I hope it's not just a 'check out what I saw on teh intarwebz' site and that, just perhaps, a new mini-genre of writing can be born, confined only by size, not by scope.

Twitter.  What a dumb name.

 

PS:  If any of you are cool enough to tweet already or want in on the 'next big internet thing' before all your friends are doing it, come join up.  And follow me.  I promise to follow you, too.  You can be party to my descriptive ramblings.


Comments
on May 20, 2008


Sometimes Henry Rollins kicks ass.

This is one of those times.
on May 21, 2008
Wow, yay for no-one giving a damn about my article!
on May 21, 2008

Hey ya big baby, it got featured, so quite yer belly-aching.

And there are probably those of us who, STILL, after even this article, don't get the point of Twitter, and don't see any reason to use the site. 

on May 21, 2008
Hey ya big baby, it got featured, so quite yer belly-aching.




I don't ever use the front page of JU anymore, it's rather unwieldy, so I do most of my navigation from the forums. Thanks, admins!
on May 21, 2008
Still haven't figured out what the point of it is. Why would anyone want to write such trivial things in public? I understand even less why anyone would want to read such things