A couple of editors were on Cedar Street late last summer, female editor types from this newspaper. This was during the Republican National Convention that was such a big success for St. Paul. It was the first time I heard the word ‘Twitter.”
Whatever Twitter was, the gals were terribly excited about it. Waiting for the light to change, I asked them what Twitter was. They could not explain it, at least not in a way that made sense. What I got out of it was that there was a reporter in the Xcel Energy Center and they were in contact with him or her through the amazing means of Twitter.
“So, in addition to telephones, e-mail, texting and, considering the proximity of the Xcel, walking back and forth, there is Twitter?”
Basically, at that point, they tuned me out.
Months went by before I heard about Twitter again. Then, political slobs were seen Twittering during the president’s address to Congress. Lately, Twittering has been exploding all over the pages of the newspapers that haven’t folded yet. Newspapers are dropping to the ground like dry leaves, but on the way down, they are only too happy to celebrate the technologies that, taken together, are one of the main reasons newspapers are dying.
I now know what Twitter is, by the way. I did some homework. It is nothing. Nothing. It is nothing wrapped in euphemisms, like “networking” or “socializing” or “staying connected in real time.”
I know what it is. And I now know what must have excited the editors late last summer. Because of Twitter, they were in contact with somebody — somebody they didn’t have to talk to — who was telling them things, like what was for lunch or who was walking by or what Katie Couric’s shoes were like or who happened to be onstage at the moment.
That’s what Twitter is. Twitter is a means by which you can type some characters on your little screen that says you just changed your shirt, and you send this off in the delusion that other people will find this interesting and maybe Twitter you back by tweeting, “What color?”
You could go all day because after color would come a size and then the material. Oh, what fun. Maybe later you could tell everybody that you just saw a cloud.
In other words, Twitter is just another time-wasting device. I have yet to read an explanation of the phenomenon that can avoid pointing out that essentially it means nothing. When you factor in browsing the Internet, sending e-mails, texting, playing around on social networking sites, like Facebook, and now Twitter, it is no wonder the economy of this once-great country is in the tank. Nobody is working.
It’s worse than nobody working. We have become a nation of attention-starved narcissists who don’t talk to each other in person but actually believe they are when they type words on a little keyboard and send them off to Twitterville.
The president is said to be a great Twitterer. Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. Politicians Twitter. Movie stars Twitter. News anchors Twitter. This once great country is not short of vanity.
Probably, somebody other than the people who invented it — some people in San Francisco — will figure out how to make money using Twitter. And just as probably, the newspapers that haven’t folded yet will continue to explore Twitter as a means of possibly attracting new readers — only they wouldn’t really be readers, not at a maximum tweet of 140 characters. Radio stations, too, are exploring how Twitter can fit into the business plan.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I don’t feel fine.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5474. Soucheray is heard from 2 to 5:30 p.m. weekdays on KSTP-AM 1500.
