Pet Peave #23: Self-Gratifying Twitter Users
// April 14th, 2009 // 5 Comments » // Pet Peeves, Twitter
Twitter is taking the web by storm and I’m glad. Not only is it the “next cool thing”, but it is having a real effect on internet culture, how we use the web, and it is beginning (in my view) to change our “offline” culture as well. But that’s another post, another day. Right now, I’d like to point out one thing that irritates me about some Twitter users.
It’s the same complaint that I had when blogging first hit the world like an atom bomb of inane “look at what my cat just did” carnage. Sure, everyone has a voice now, but should everyone really have a voice? I guess so. Honestly, it’s hard not to want to restrict that freedom when your buddy expects you to look at daily updates on the state of his back hair. Or your Aunt wants you to look at 23 pictures of her in the Snuggie she got for Christmas on Facebook. Sometimes it’s best to keep our narcissism to ourselves until we eventually discover that the world simply can’t revolve around more than one person at a time. Now, years later, it seems like some of the “Cat Blogging” has abated and the blogosphere has reached a little more equilibrium (well… mostly). Maybe we just had to get it out of our system for a while.
Now Twitter enters the scene and the immediacy of communication and life-share gets us all hot and bothered again. The problem is that life-share can quickly become over-share.