Kevin Gisi

Going 2 bed now. OMG! Going 2 dinner back l8er. Yes, these are some of the mind-numbing pieces of information you can now share with everyone on Twitter. Unless you have been living under a rock you have no doubt heard of the social networking phenomenon known as Twitter. Twitter allows users to send “tweets.” Tweets are messages of 140 characters or less.

I’m afraid I must be missing something. I just don’t get Twitter. Surely that puts me in the minority, but this is one case where I’m glad to be in the minority. For those of you who like Twitter, brace yourselves. I am now going to complete a thought in more than 140 characters.

For the record, I am not opposed to all social networking. I am a well-documented Facebook addict. One of the main reasons I am opposed to Twitter is that there is simply no way to communicate any intelligent or meaningful thought in 140 characters or less. At least on Facebook you can communicate complete thoughts, join interactive groups, play games and do more than just communicate random thoughts.

Another problem with Twitter, and perhaps the worst one, is that it represents the further dumbing down of our society. The bottom line is that Twitter is not used to have significant discussions. More often than not, it is no more than glamorized text messaging, which is almost as bad.

To make matters worse, Twitter is now being used by basically every celebrity on the planet. People can sign-up and “follow” celebrities every two seconds via their Twitter-feed. And really, isn’t that what our society needs more of, celebrity fluff news?

Now not only will fluff news take up what should be valuable time for in-depth reporting on the major issues of the day, now it will take up more time on the Internet. Isn’t there enough of this garbage out there with People magazine and TMZ.com?

I will grant that during the controversy over the Iranian election Twitter was a useful tool for people trying to get around government control of information, but seriously, what has Twitter done to benefit the world at large?

If you need further proof of the evils of Twitter, might I suggest the behavior of our Congress during President Obama’s recent address about health care. Instead of paying respect to the commander-in-chief (whatever party they come from), many of our own elected leaders were caught on camera either tweeting or text messaging during the speech.

In the midst of one of the fiercest debates in recent memory, instead of paying attention and gearing up for an intelligent discussion, our own Congressmen were busy tweeting. No wonder our political discourse has gone down the toilet.

Twitter also represents another way for us to not have face-to-face communication. Call me old fashioned, but every once in a while I like to have a human voice with some emotion and not just text characters. It’s cool to really hear someone laugh instead of punching LOL in on your cell phone, Blackberry, etc.

Overuse of Twitter, text messaging and other applications of their ilk is part of the reason I have come to the conclusion our society is incapable of having an intelligent discussion about anything. How can we expect to, when we spend more time plugged in to our technology than actually talking to people on the phone or, here’s a radical idea, actually talking to people in person!

Few things irk me more than watching people on their cell phones or texting/tweeting while walking across the street. First of all, shouldn’t you be watching for traffic or other hazards? And second, is your conversation or text really that important you can’t wait until you are in a more appropriate place to do so? I don’t need to hear your cell phone conversation, thank you very much.

In short, I despise Twitter. It is a colossal waste of time and life. It harms our societal discourse in many ways. Whether it’s politicians tweeting during a presidential address or people getting more celebrity news than they need, Twitter is something society can do without.

We need to go back to complete sentences and intelligent debate on real issues instead of tweeting about who got voted off “American Idol” (another waste of time and life, but that’s another story) last night.

I am not on, nor do I have any intention of getting on, the Twitter bandwagon. Call me an elitist snob if you will. If that means I communicate in complete sentences and don’t waste the few brain cells I have tweeting, then so be it. I like it that way.