TWITter

When I took latin in fourth grade, I learned two things:

1) How to tell if a Catholic priest is blessing me or trying to throw game, and

2) You can tell a lot about a word by breaking it down.

Look, I'm getting older. Fuck you. You are too. But I don't wanna be that guy who has to pay the kid next door five bucks to reprogram my TV every time the batteries in my remote crap out. I begrudgingly opened a MYSPACE account just in time to see the digital UHauls disappear over the horizon. It was a hard way to find out how creepy and uncreative my friends were. Like FLUFFYLOVER77. You know who I'm talking about, BILL.

It was cute. I told everybody my favorite bands, my favorite movies, my likes, my dislikes(mean people *sadface*). I got a bunch of friend requests from half naked chicks who wanted me to check out things they couldn't show me HERE and metal bands from the Czech Republic who thought I should check out their shit since I liked SIMON & GARFUNKEL. I get disgruntled pretty easily (sometimes before a single stone is ever thrown), so I took my journal entry power to proclaim to the cyber ghost town that I was going to single-handedly bring everyone back to MYSPACE. Then I left.

The next day, I opened a FACEBOOK account, hunted down a couple schoolmates, and started my friend accumulation. The comment box on other peoples' walls was a perfect way to express myself in real time. Taunting my buddies for putting up pics of their families, giving me updates on how the laundry was piling up, and (my favorite) asking if anyone had any weed they wanted to sell. I would post a link to the description of THE PATRIOT ACT on their wall, hoping they could teach themselves to fish before they ended up in the belly of a whale.

But it's never enough, is it? As phones got smarter, we got dumber. Telling people when we went on vacation so one of our 'friends'(who was more likely a desperate token to help get your number up to look more popular) could take their sweet time burglarizing our house. When we went to work so your 'friend you have in common' could sneak over and fuck your 'in a relationship with' girlfriend. Life is a card game, and the more tells you have, the more likely you are to lose. When you TELL the world EVERYTHING, you should just hand the world your wallet. Save everybody the time and trouble.

Then comes TWITTER. The ultimate in live feeds. 140 character bursts of GPS worthy up-to-the-minute action coming at the speed of Matrix style binary code. Only instead of zeroes and ones, it's a flood of #s and @s. All TWITTER's missing is a dude with a dog's head holding a golden staff up to the sun next to some pyramids. I didn't have the first clue what was going on. I thought I hit the DOS button on my computer. They make TWITTER FOR DUMMIES books. I'm not willing to throw my hands up in defeat. I'd rather bash it instead.

After a couple 'tweets' (God, I feel dirty even saying it), I realized I was was out of my depth. People were @ing me, putting # signs next to my name. I didn't know whether to take it as a compliment or call the cops. People I never heard of started following me. I'm already paranoid as it is. The unsolicited attention made me go on a canned good shopping spree and warm up the bomb shelter.

Jesus only needed twelve followers (or was it thirteen? My research department is on vacation). In a stockpiling effort that would rival the Cold War arms race, people greedily make 'follow me and I'll follow you' promises. After making a few of those deals myself, I don't make those deals anymore. Blue balls hurt like a mug.