For a while there, I was really acting like such a twit...

During dinner I would look down as if I dropped a fork to see what toothpaste some big actor was using- as most tweets are lacking the existential weight of the writings of Jean Paul Sarte. Yet the emptiness of the 140 character bits and bites of their existence somehow connected me to their lives, in a way I think made me feel like they were friends. Of course in retrospect, I was delusional and since adjusting my medication (joke) I no longer vicariously live through the banality of ordinary life updates and the occasional ignorant opinion and/or political statement. Facebook is all about the in group, and exclusivity is encouraged. But Twitter is like a balcony above a VIP room you cannot sit in but are allowed to stare upon, in envy. The funniest thing about Twitter is the face that it serves ONLY one class- the famous. Who cares what I do? My family could hardly care, much less a stranger in Peoria. So how does anyone ordinary like me get enough followers to justify the composition and broadcast of a textual piece of plastic- one that is littered as it is twittered upon the pristine landscape of cyber space only to never biodegrade and doomed to remain immortalized in a cache or cloud and to the citizens in the 27th century researched and read aloud like a Rosetta Stone within the iPhone, how will histrory judge us, by our tweets or by actions. I fear the former, as actions are not immortalized but fleeting and if not witnessed even the greatest sacrifice is ignored by others. Andy Warhol said "If it's not recorded it didn't happen" and he was a prophet if not a great artist. Perhaps he is right- but does a tweet read by no one (say, most of mine for example) in the middle of the woods still make a sound? We live in a culture of American Idol worship, where fame is the name of the game. Talent is marginalized and the markets seeks to repeat only past success, ignoring innovation and vision of those with most talent. As with Proust and Van Goth many great artists and actors will find fame only after their death, and perhaps their tweets from years before will be discovered like a trail of bread crumbs, leading them to a masterpiece hidden away in a dark corner of Amazon's e-book inventory. So perhaps there is a value in Twitter, but it is abstract, long term and by then the fad will be over- only to be replaced by a video platform that makes writing and reading as obsolete as the typewriter. Come to think of it, those 140 characters may end of saving Western literature, and thus, civilization. I still hate it now anyway, and I urge whoever is reading this to ask themselves- why ever waste one minute reading ABOUT ANOTHER PERSON'S LIFE in little bursts? If you find someone interesting, wait and read their biography- it's like a thousand tweets strung together. Oh wait- no one reads books or newspapers anymore... Why do I feel like NETWORK's protagonist Beale? Why do I feel alienated by social networks designed to connect me to others? Paradoxical, I am confused... but looking back, I was distracted and amused. Maybe that is the idea behind all of this stuff- to keep up looking away from reality. Timothy Leary said to drop out. I say unplug.