What If I Was A Twitter Celebrity? #whatifIwasaTwittercelebrity

I travel a lot for work. In fact, I was in the midst of a ludicrous string of flights last Tuesday, which is why I didn't get a chance to post anything - but enough with the lame excuses. Anyway, when you go through airport security nowadays, they generally direct you through some pretty intimidating imaging technology called Backscatter X-Rays. Use of this technology is optional, they always say, and if you don't want to be exposed to the little extra burst of potentially harmful radiation, you can "opt out" and select a full-body pat-down instead. I always opt out, despite the supposedly low dose, because when you average 4-6 trips to the airport a week, those mrems start to add up, you know what I'm sayin'?

The concept of "opting out" of a commonplace, accepted practice that people have long since taken for granted came up to me recently regarding Facebook. Sure there was a time when I made the conscious decision (much later than most) to sign up for the service, yet as the years went by and I became gradually more and more dissatisfied with the product, I simply put up with it. I was on Facebook, and that was that. Until recently, when I decided I didn't want to put up with the hassle of maintaining a digital profile, and I successfully "opted out" of Facebook.

Just to set the records straight, I don't have a problem with Social Media as such, or with anyone who uses Facebook. I just think it should be separate and distinct from our regular lives, in the way that mobile uploads and status updates can never allow Facebook to be again. I think Social Media should be something for which you have to consciously and actively "opt in", rather than the unspoken norm that acts as an alternative reality/massive time-suck. I think Social Media should have a purpose and be directly to the point. Which is why I've recently gotten involved with Twitter. And why I'm currently fantasizing about what it would be like to be a Twitter Celebrity. I even created a hashtag, which asks the musical question: #whatifIwasaTwittercelebrity?

Continue...

Continue...

Funny Twitter Accounts Worth Preserving

Twitter is so strange. I think we can all agree on that.

It’s a bizarre hybrid of text messaging, instant messaging, Facebook status updates, and self/commercial advertising. Its character constraints encourage both tiresome Internet lingo (“c u l8r”, “lets go to 5 guys b4 the movie”, &c) and creative sentence structure (a good vocabulary helps you express complex ideas in 140 characters). Twitter’s infrastructure is so simple it’s wormed its way onto every web-connected device as well as “ordinary” SMS-enabled cell phones.

Perhaps it is deceptively simple – at least when it comes to entertainment. CBS’s recent cancellation of $#*! My Dad Says (discussed on this week’s podcast) is a reminder that Twitter functions best on its own terms.  It may be funny to read aloud Sarah Palin’s serpentine mangling of the English language to your friends, but her tweets would swiftly fall flat if propped up as anything other than one woman’s (or her publicist’s) inane chatter.

Hollywood and the various TV networks are blind to this. Chasing their audiences like deranged teenage exes, they bottle up any intellectual property the public might possibly like even a tiny bit in hopes of catching lightning.

Today, I’d like to speak up for the humorous Twitter accounts that should be left alone by TV.

Continue...

Continue...

The Twitter News Network

The ever-present news story this week (you know, the one about that guy the U.S. has been in search of for a decade) has me thinking about the way we get out news. Almost as central to the story itself was the way the news spread. So how do I really get my news? Yes, I listen to NPR in the mornings while shaving (it's my "me time," thankyouverymuch), and sure, my personal choice in the Big Four is NBC, but where do I really get my news from first? Sad to say: Twitter.

Let me tell you my "Where Were You When Osama Died" story, in an effort to illustrate. I was working at my restaurant that fateful night. The bartender, a "seasoned vet" of the industry, came running over. He spun on me, his crackling voice tight with excitement, "Did you hear? One of the guys at the bar said they found Osama! Shot him down, too!" Knowing our bar crowd to be a proud and boastful lot I dismissed this story at first. Then I thought to check Twitter. Let me reiterate: My home base for fact checking is now a social media website. Sure enough, my feed was full of the news and Osama was a trending topic. Why didn't I turn one of the TV's to CNN? Why didn't I ask the cooks to turn the radio to NPR for a second (well, because I would have lost a finger to their butcher's knife)? Why, oh why, did I turn to Twitter?

Continue...

Continue...