I’ve just had an invitation to Twitter.
Nooooooooooooooooo.
Just before I left Facebook I’d taken to trying to subvert the status thingy by typing in the names of any songs on my iPod that fitted the phrase “Giles Booth is…”. For a while a couple of people may have decided that I was fractionally more interesting, thanks to lines like “Giles Booth is being boiled”, “Giles Booth is between Kate and Naomi” and “Giles Booth is cheating on you”.
But if Facebook is utterly pointless, then Twitter is the last refuge of the insane, web 2.0, 3.0, leading edge, bleeding edge doyenne of les citoyennes du planet web. Repeat after me: “I am updating my Twitter status, I am updating my Twitter status, I am updating my Twitter status…”
Giles Booth is watching Morvern Callar, drinking cider brandy then off to bed.
Yeah well, I didn’t know it was going to invite you. I just thought it was going to add all my addresses to my contact list or something, in case anyone I know joined in the future. I was a bit shocked when mails came bouncing back to me like ricochets in a pill-box.
Anyway, twitter isn’t any more insane than anything else. It’s just like blogging but a lot littler. If you have something long to say you blog, if you have something short to say you put it in the ‘briefly’ category, if you have nothing to say you twitter. It reminds me of what I liked about Facebook. The gentle babble of voices in the distance that you hear when you’re camping. Soothing, reassuring, reminding us that we’re not alone.
I am criticising something I have little or no experience of, I admit. It’s just that some of the people (present company excepted) who have sent me Twitter invites are the kind of people who put photos of their breakfast on Flickr every day from their mobile phone… and I kind of want to scream GET A LIFE at them…
Anyway I’m thinking of starting a service called Schwitter which will email you a different piece of Dadaist or found art every day.