It's no secret I hate a lot of things. Pickles, Ohio State, Bill Murray and cankles just to name a few. But nothing, not even Ohio State, trumps my loathing for Twitter. Mind you, I have never twittered or tweeted as the kids say but the entire idea of it makes my stomach turn. Who needs so much attention that they need to constantly "tweet" their boring, mundane life updates (if you can call them that) to all of their "followers?"
Me. That's who. Twitter, in theory, was made for me. It's blatant and upfront about selling itself to the self-indulgent, self-obsessed attention whores. Selling itself to me. And yet I wouldn't bite. Is it because I am scared of becoming obsessed with another online form of communication? Or is Twitter really that awful?
The AOL Instant Messenger of my high school years is joined by the gchat of my college years and the facebook of my law school years and every day I happily sign on to all three to see who I can talk to, whose wall I can write on and more importantly who wants to talk to me and who wants to comment on my (embarrassingly frequent) status updates. Today I began to wonder if its a problem that I live my life through status updates, omgs and likes. Could I, the girl who deletes status messages out of a deep sense of shame and failure if no one comments on them, possibly give up online communication?
The answer is a loud and resounding no but I am willing to try (at least for the month of July), fail miserably and document my pathetic attempt and all of the horrible withdrawal symptoms that accompany it. And maybe at the end of the month I will realize I don't need gchat and I don't need facebook and I don't need AIM. Maybe I will realize I can email people, call people (gasp) and talk to people in person (double gasp) instead of typing them all of my mundane, yet hilarious insights. But maybe I will realize no one misses my "Mike Brown is the worst coach in the NBA and I don't understand consideration" status updates, my "omg did you see how fat Jessica Simpson looked" gchats and my "are you on Ambien again?" ims. But that is the risk I must take. I, like that guy on "Dirty Jobs" must suffer for the greater good and sacrifice myself for the good of social science.
This experience may change me for the worse. My relationships, my typing abilities and stalking talents may suffer but I know that through out it all, one thing will remain constant. Twitter will really still be that awful.
