Twitterification

I have gone to the dark side.

I am now twittering. And sending tweets. And feeling twitterific. And any other coinage/catachresis you’d like to apply.

Look for me under bookfox.

Now that I’m done with my cross-platform promotion, time for some serious analyzing of this new medium.

My biggest problem with text-messaging and twittering is that it’s so often misused. It displaces people. And I chose the root “place” carefully, because it really does dislodge people from their place. When people are constantly twittering and textmessaging, they aren’t actually spending time with their physically present friends.

My goal is always to actually be in the place that I am. In other words, if I am out with friends, I want to be talking and paying attention to those friends, and not updating on Twitter or textmessaging someone who isn’t present. My friends (and even new acquaintances!) deserve my close attention.

And even if I’m by myself, I don’t want to be dependent upon needing a diversion. I want to hone my talent at simply being — in the deepest sense of that word — without depending on any technological diversions. I’m fine with updating if I’m by myself, but I don’t want to feel this pressure or irresistible desire to update whenever I am alone.

It’s a bit scary to think about how badly generation Y will be at interacting in awkward social environments. They’ll be so used to escaping through ducking their heads into their phone, that they’ll have no idea how to actually endure, and make forced small talk. Remove the phone, and voila! No social skills left.

This whole message probably seems weird. I start a post by telling you that I’m twittering, and then spend the rest of the post railing against the medium. But I just mean that the enormous downfalls of this technology need to be highlighted, and I’m just trying to be careful (in a WendellBerry-esque way) of how it impacts my life.

All that to say I’ll be twittering sporadically, carefully, and as wisely as I can manage in 140 characters.