Shut the birds up, I can’t hear my Twitter!

AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! It’s gotta be the end of world, everything is backwards, we’re in an alternate universe, I’m on Twitter, WAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!

(if you want the link to my Twitter profile, go to the bottom. If you enjoy reading and aren’t an idiot, read the rest before you go to the bottom)

For those who had known me from back in 2008 and early 2009, I would constantly make comments about how I thoroughly hated all social networking sites and would never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever…

…ever ever ever ever ever ever…

…ever ever ever ever ever ever…

…ever ever *deep breath*…ever ever, ever, ever, ever… ever join one of them.

I just find the concept so stupid. My position on such a topic was only solidified when I was on the bus a few days ago and I saw a girl look at 12 empty seats in the back section that I was sitting in and not sit in any of them, the only possible reason being that she would have to sit next to the person occupying the other seat: apparently a bad thing.

Times like that are when I fear for the future of humanity. At what point did we alienate ourselves from ourselves? The New Silent Generation is so afraid of human contact that they dare not look anyone in the eye and will do all they can to distance themselves from anyone that’s not going to sexually relieve them, but so desperate for human recognition and approval that they cling to whatever contact they can. But then they’re in a conundrum. How can they keep from being near people and still believe that someone likes them?

Enter social networking sites. Somehow, young people(wow, that makes me sound so much older than I actually am) just manage to forget that other human beings are on the other end of the Internet on the right subconscious levels that they are perfectly fine with throwing all the personal info about themselves for the world to see, but at the same time, aware enough that someone is reading it and has clicked a button to be a friend with them that they don’t feel like a gaping void is in their lives.

I wonder how many people of Gen-Z know about how to actually make friends. When you go outside, meet someone in the flesh who has a personality and interests that you can validate as true, are similar to your own and take a liking to them. When you slowly form a good relationship with them that they are someone whom you can rely on for help when you need it, or to be the person to hang out with you if everyone else is busy or whatever. Anyone? No? Didn’t think so…

Friendship isn’t as simple as stalking someone’s small updates about what they had for dinner, how they don’t want to have to go to bed early on a Friday night, or how they’ve got so much homework “roflewtfomgg2gcyal8rlol!!!!111!1!!111!11″

Which leads nicely back into my original statement: So, I sort of understood why people want to be on social networking sites, but I never found the need for it anyway. Basically all of the people I know online are on maybe one or two forums, and I know they frankly don’t give a crap about the minute little details of my life. Plus, they usually all required personal info that I have built up an automatic reflex to never put on the Internet. Hell, it took me ages just to break the habit of not uploading YouTube vids that had my voice in them.

So, I never signed up for any of them. Until today…*ominous music plays, seemingly from everywhere at once, as fog descends and the lights, which only had on and off states, dim to 30%*

Yeah, yeah, whatever. My stance on social networking sites still stays, and the people who use them to tell people about what they had for dinner etc. are still just as bad. I would never sign up to a social networking site, and I would never sign up to anything that forced me to give personal info out publicly either.

But Twitter’s a bit of a different breed. For the last couple of months, as I look at the people I care about making relatively meaningful updates to their Twitter accounts, I realised that it’s not actually a social networking sites. Oh sure, the douchebags who whore themselves to whatever’s biggest this week and have no problem with telling everyone where they live, who they are, what they look like, their personal schedule and will update with things that only their mum cares about; they’ll tell you it’s a social networking site — in the 10 minutes it takes for them to come up with that opinion because they’re so stupid — but in truth, as it says, it’s a microblogging service.

Social networking sites are all about finding people who have the same interests as you and being able to know info about them at a glance, like their full name, but Twitter is just for a quick update about anything. To stupid little kids, it’s a social networking service, I suppose. For people with jobs and/or companies that they represent, it’s one of the most useful tools available.

And that’s what it is: A tool. I’m glad I managed to reach this conclusion, because apart from the following joke that I was going to do at standup:

“I think I’m the only person in the world who hasn’t even thought about joining Twitter. I mean, I just think that if I did sign up for it, I’d abuse the hell out of it. 8:00 – Took a bite of some toast. 8:01 – Chewing the toast. It had jam on it, by the way. 8:02 – I needed some juice to help swallow the toast. All good now. I get the feeling that by the end of one day of me telling the world about the most boring stuff in my life, I’d have as many tweets as someone who’s been on for half a year, ya know?”

I just don’t think there was any benefit to me not joining Twitter.

Okay, I will probably be updating with fairly pointless things about my life once in a while, but I’ll keep them entertaining, and this way, I can eliminate having to remember to do that weekly blog update thing I suck at already after a mere 3 weeks of doing it.

Oh, sonofabitch, how is it that every time I want to make a relatively short update about something, it turns into a bloody essay? This was just supposed to be an entertaining post about how I’m now on Twitter and clarifying that it’s just a tool and nothing more; now look at the damn thing. That’s almost an hour I’ll never get back. Sure, I would’ve done bugger-all in that time, but it’s still kinda annoying.

OH! Almost forgot to tell you where the actual Twitter page was, didn’t I? http://twitter.com/frozentreasure – If you’re on Twitter yourself, don’t forget to follow me. That’s ‘follow’, not ‘add me’, because you’re not adding me as anything, and even if you were, I’m not going to be your friend that easy. Or if I respond to a message, either. Evoke some sort of emotional response when I converse with you, or else friendship has nothing to go hand-in-hand with, got it?

Regards,

≈Roy