Twitter.. “Random and incoherent as writing on a bathroom wall” – Mockumentary trailer about Twitter

I am not alone, but I think twitter is killing explored thought. You can express a small amount of information, or a slice of personality but it is so easy to sound generic, or to put on a front. I follow some random celebrities and the best ones are like Rainn Wilson known as Office’s Dwight. He presents criticisms of culture combined with his dry wit and a lot of images or articles to support his thought. He is up to 2 million followers and they all get to see this side of Rainn. I also follow the Prime Minister of Canada who tweets about govt policy, and humanitarian @billgates, tweets about saving the world
All of them show one identity; their twitterface.

The reason I think twitter is killing explored thought is that I can’t ever get a real sense of who Rainn is, or why is how he is, unless he goes on a crazy @kanyewest apology rant with 70 tweets in one night. This is absurd and not the point of twitter at all. The point is to be mindless and concise. Heartless even more than mindless. When you are communicating ‘fun’ thoughts to two million people, it is easier to not get your heart in the way. Without knowing your audience, the most surefire way to appeal to the most possible is to be highly generic. If you talk about something very specific with a long backstory, or what is sad, or happy, or issues in life, these two million followers may unfollow.

I think a major reason a lot of this happens is because people bear their own burdens and dont want to hear about others, or unload on to others either. As a populace we can be interdependent on a fun chit-chat level, but when it gets real, we become islands of isolation. There is some safety and predictability in this obvious human tendency to turtle up. You can’t really get additionally hurt if you dont let anyone in. Certainly the opposite is bad: being an emotional mess crying in front of everyone about getting dumped is heavily misguided and probably causes lost respect in general. I sometimes feel shameful in saying I have a blog since many of them are exactly this: Emo girl rants about boys, american idol, vampires and punk rock adds up to be excruciatingly painful to read.

So we need to put on a face that is appropriate for the relationship and communication medium. The most superficial and one-dimensional of them all is the twitterface. But there is also the workface, streetwalkingface, doctorface, and others. Sometimes a good workplace, or a good doctor will create an environment to allow more personality angles to shine through, but at the outset it is usually safest to be strictly professional, or strictly medicinal.

I feel uniquely comfortable with my blog because I feel able to present a lot more than I normally could in my day to day. I don’t have to worry about who can spend 5 minutes to read about my primitive thoughts on psychology or sociology because this is written to be written, not to be read. Twitter I think is more designed to be read. The workplace by definition revolves around getting work done. But a personal blog can be anything. Where else can one uninhibited to be who they want to be? Not twitter.