#peoplepleasestop Is Everything That Is Wrong With Twitter
By James Brady RyanFebruary 1st, 2010, 5:41 pmComments (9)
In which I ask Scanner Ben to try and defend one of today's trending topics, #peoplepleasestop, which is all about things you wish people would stop.* I have a suggestion! You have one guess as to what it is.
I know you only get 140 characters, people, but please, you must be able to write words at least a bit more correctly than this:
BellazWorld #peoplepleasestop actin lyk u got wat u dont specially towards ppl who knw u BOY I WAS UR GIRL I SEEN YO MAMA GIV U DAT lol
Uh, okay. I'll cut that out, I guess. But from all I can tell, these requests boil down to three categories of things people should stop:
- Thinking they are attractive
- Not putting out (women only, obvi)
- Liking Justin Bieber, teen idol/zygote
So I asked Scanner Ben - resident Twitter enthusiast - to make the case for this phenomenon (spoiler alert: I win):
Me: As i've familiarized myself with twitter more
Me: it's just so sad
Scanner Ben: I know
Me: Like, what does this even say:
Me: "BellazWorld #peoplepleasestop actin lyk u got wat u dont specially towards ppl who knw u BOY I WAS UR GIRL I SEEN YO MAMA GIV U DAT lol"
Scanner Ben: It's scientifically proven that 68% of the populace are dunces and only 34% are more than half literate
Scanner Ben: and 100% of those people tweet
Truer words, Scanner Ben. Truer words.
*I figured I should explain this terribly complex concept so no one gets confused.
Comments ( 9 )
Scanner James' Twitter Feed (aka hypocrisy!)
IamScannerJames: Good Morning Monday! Wonder what I'll blog about today!
IamScannerJames: bloggity blog. Bloggity blog blog. I'm kind of hungry.
IamScannerJames: The internet is empty :( Except for cats!
IamScannerJames: Ooo. I'll blog about Twitter.
IamScannerJames: Bloggity blog blog.
Dismiss Twitter at your own peril. You sound like an old school marm afraid of technology and incomplete sentences.
I don't hate everything about Twitter, puttinontheritz, but I will always carry on the fight against incomplete sentences.
The only reason Twitter is talked about so much is because journalists like it. Because they like it they think everyone likes it - unversalising from their own experiences....a very common human frailty, and one that we all indulge in from time to time.
I did twitter...i gave it a chance...i decided it is worthless.
The number of uses are already starting to fall dramatically, and the peak number of users never got that high really...especially when compared to the amount of free press and publicity Twitter has been given.
Twitter has another 6 months tops...i'd put money on it.
One of the enduring rules of English usage is this: "Whenever I spot mistakes in someone's grammar, that person is clearly an idiot; whenever someone spots mistakes in my grammar, that person is a trifling blowhard." The line between acceptable and unacceptable errors is usually personal and idiosyncratic. For instance, I rankled at a number of errors in today's Scanner posts, including someone pluralizing Saturday as "Saturday's"--apostrophes never make a plural. On the other hand, I have to respect this tweeter for making the best of 133 characters (by my count, she dropped at least eighteen letters). I still have no idea what it says, but then...I don't think she was talking to me.
Twitter may yet have a corrosive effect on our culture--for instance, by clouding the line of socially acceptable self-disclosure. But I'm not ready to blame it for the death of the English language. The WWI generation communicated largely through truncated telegrams, and it produced some of the best writers in modern history. And if you ever have the opportunity to go through the telegrams of John Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf, or Rebecca West (some are published, others are in archives), most of them don't make a lot more sense than that tweet.
Twitter would be great but for other people.
I feel like the people who do these trending topics that aren't based on breaking news are just doing it to escape from incredibly frustrating professional lives.
Matthew, what's considered socially acceptable self-disclosure can often be harmful because it prevents people from sharing their fears, wants, needs, and desires. If that information was known, it could bring people closer together, de stigmatize "mental illness", and make Over Heard in NYC a lot funnier.
The only real criticism I have of Twitter, besides its inherent narcissism (which has been somewhat eroded by its practicality as a protest tool), is that it, along with texting, is removing our ability to speak extemporaneously. Real conversations don't happen 160 characters at a time and people are being trained to only develop a line of thought enough to release it-then it dies.
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