Twitter: What Are You Doing? I Don’t Care

October 13, 2008 by Libby  Send to a Friend

The Twitter Directory knows of about 3,180,287 Twitter users.

At the nexus of gchat, Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, and Blogger- is Twitter, the asshole of the Internet, or at least where the assholes of the Internet go to commiserate.

People join Twitter for a number of reasons: out of a desire to obtain or disseminate crucial information, express themselves, connect, be part of a community, communicate, et al. But at the root of any Twitter users motivation lies a desperate and narcissistic search for relevance and importance.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a narcissist:

• has a grandiose sense of self-importance,
• is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love;
• believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions);
• requires excessive admiration

This may not be very different from the motivations driving Facebook users and bloggers (especially as applications become more integrated). The Facebook-narcissist lists his/her “favorite books, shows, movies, music” and creates a personal myth/online personae. The blogger-narcissist writes whatever he/she wants without restriction and creates a narrative.  Twitter, in restricting “tweets” to 140 characters of less while enabling their creation by a myriad of devices, has birthed a species of super mutant narcissists. Twitter-users are different from their facebook-blogging predecessors in that:

1) The Twitter-user’s fantasy of self is not elegantly constructed (how could you possibly do anything elegant in 140 characters). In fact, the self that they are portraying comes out in hyperlinks, camera phone shots, and mundane shit dribbles punctuated with emoticons and convenient contractions: “srsly”, “IMHO”, etc… The tune the narcissist weaves on facebook is legato where as on Twitter it is staccato. The Twitter user is the bratty child interrupting adult discussion at dinner table by standing on his/her chair yelling, “My turn! Listen to meeeeeee!!!”

2) The Twitter-user’s need for constant validation can be satisfied at any time and anywhere as I’m sure you can probably update your twitter from a TI-86.

Now that we know the type of person who uses Twitter, let’s examine the Tweet-err-Twatosphere and see what these narcissists are up to!

When you go to the “Why Use Twitter?” tab on the Twitter website, this is what is offered as normal uses:

• “Eating soup? Research shows that moms want to know.” (What mom uses Twitter? Why make your mom worrying that you’re sick once she learns you’re eating soup?)
• “Running late to a meeting? Your co–workers might find that useful.” (Who is Twitter friends with their coworkers? What kind of office has an official policy to use Twitter?)
• “Partying?” Your friends may want to join you.” (ugh)

One “normal” person used Twitter to propose. The only thing less romantic than this is being proposed to on the Jumbo-Tron during a NHL game.

Celebrities On Twitter

Since every Twitter account consists mainly of bullshit and I don’t have any friends on Twitter to publicly expose,  I took examples of typical Twitter use from the biggest narcissists of them all, celebrities! (yes, there are Twitter-users with Wikipedia pages that are not self-authored). For anyone that mourns the death of celebrity mystique: avert your eyes.

Questlove from the Roots twitters!

Questlove has tons of “followers”!- apparently he tweets with Qtip from Tribe! What’s that guy been up to since his solo career tanked?

Quest tweets with Nas, who wants more hip hop artists to tweet with!

Quest also tweets with Tina Fey. I love McDonald’s too Tina!

Following the 6 degrees of Questlove’s Twitter accounts: Tina Fey tweets with Rivers Cuomo!

Brett Gurewitz from Bad Religion has an account too!

But by far, the most prolific celebrity “tweeter” (?) is MC Hammer

ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….. Twitter blows!

In Defense of Twitter?

Defenders say Twitter encourages citizen journalism and improves the breadth of reporting by real journalists. John Dickerson, a political correspondent for Slate, claims Twitter helps him report from the US presidential campaign trail, allowing him to give real-time updates that are “much more authentic, because it really is from inside the room.”

Ana Marie Cox, who got her start at the blog Wonkette, is now a “real journalist” for Time. Let’s see how Twitter helps her reporting from the campaign trail:

Wow. Hard. Hitting.

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