This is worse than Facebook

You know how I've complained about how I just don't get Facebook — that I find it disorienting, and just generally a lousy way to communicate information?

Well, I've found a worse way — Twitter.

Have you seen this new site that S.C. Rep. Dan Hamilton and self-described GOP "political operative" Wesley Donehue have started, SCTweets? Basically, its point is:

…to find a creative way to showcase SC’s tech-savvy elected officials.
Specifically, we expect the Statehouse crew to be twittering a lot from
the floor and we thought it would be cool to see what they were saying.
That goal somehow expanded and we decided to showcase all South
Carolina politicos with our directory. We then gave them a way to
interact through #sctweets.

Look, I don't mean to criticize Messrs. Hamilton and Donehue at all. I appreciate the effort. Go for it. But when I try to obtain any sort of information of value from a series of incomplete, typo-ridden sentence fragments from a bunch of people ranging from Anton Gunn to David Thomas to Bob Inglis to Nathan Ballentine to Thad Viers, with a lot of Blogosphere usual suspects such as Mattheus Mei thrown in, I feel like I've trying to get nutrition from a bowl of Lucky Charms mixed with Cracker Jack with cotton candy and Pop Rocks on top, stirred with a Slim Jim. Just a jumble of junk.

The "authors" aren't to blame. It's the medium. I'm still waiting to find any value in this Twitter thing. I suspect I'll be waiting a long time.

What do I consider to be GOOD way to communicate information? Well, here's a coincidence: I actually looked at my Facebook page this morning, and as usual got little out of it. But I noticed where a friend I worked with a quarter-century ago posted something that seemed a deliberate illustration of the incoherence of Facebook. He exhorted readers to:

* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall.

So I followed his instructions (except for the posting part). The book nearest to my laptop was the literally dog-eared (chewed by a dog that died three decades ago) paperback Byline: Ernest Hemingway. Here's the fifth sentence on page 56 (if you count the incomplete, continued sentence at the top of the page as the first):

"He smiled like a school girl, shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands to his face in a mock gesture of shame."

And you know what? I got more out of that than I got out of that Twitter page. At least I formed a clear, coherent picture of something.

It occurs to me that Twitter is the bright new world that that Colorado congressman who claims credit for killing The Rocky Mountain News extols. And then it occurs to me that to the extent he is right, to the extent that this is the future of political communication, we are in a lot of trouble int his country…

17 thoughts on “This is worse than Facebook

  1. Greg Flowers

    This is the “pet rock” of its time. Is popularity will be fierce and ephemeral. Doonesbury is doing a good series on it. I don’t agree with Doonesbury’s politics but often find it to befunny. I don’t agree with Al Franken’s politics and almost never find him to be either.

  2. Greg Flowers

    Should have read:
    I don’t agree with Doonesbury’s politics but often find it to be funny and insightful. I don’t agree with Al Franken’s politics and almost never find him to be either.

  3. Birch Barlow

    Page 56, sentence 5:
    Imputed interest rules prevent taxpayers from using loans to shift income to taxpayers in lower brackets or to shift income from ordinary income to capital gains by raising purchase price and charging less interest. (IRC §7872)
    I understand the appeal of Facebook. But after realizing how much time I wasted on it, I deleted my page. And now I don’t miss it at all.
    As for Twitter, I don’t get it either. But apparently some people find it useful.

  4. Brad Warthen

    That’s a great example of a practical application of Twitter, Birch!
    The thing that confuses me about Twitter, though, it just seems to me there are so many other ways that already existed to do that same thing.
    I carry two cell phones. With one, I could send a text message (if I wanted to pay for that). The other is a PDA on which I can send e-mail, or post something on my blog (although it’s far more cumbersome than on a laptop), or whatever. So I’m missing what it is that Twitter does that’s new. I guess it makes it more convenient or something.
    I’m feeling a little like the comedienne (remember when we called female comedians “comediennes”?) who said, like 25 years ago, that she absolutely refused to buy CDs (to replace her cassette tapes, which replaced her vinyl) “until I get a guarantee that they won’t invent anything else.” Or something like that. And of course, since then, we’ve been subjected to MP3 players…

  5. bud

    But when I try to obtain any sort of information of value from a series of incomplete, typo-ridden (actually, they’re more typo than they are coherent thoughts) sentences from a bunch of people ranging from Anton Gunn to David Thomas to Bob Inglis to Nathan Ballentine to Thad Viers, with a lot of Blogosphere usual suspects such as Mattheus Mei thrown in, I feel like I’ve trying to get nutrition from a bowl of Lucky Charms mixed with Cracker Jack with cotton candy and Pop Rocks on top, stirred with a Slim Jim. Just a jumble of junk.
    -Brad
    Try reading The State newspaper sometimes if you really want to get frustrated trying to find useful information.

  6. bud

    Ok, just for the fun of it. Here’s page 56 sentence 5 from the “book” I was just reading:
    “You must use a participating pharmacy, and you must show your health plan indentification card when purchasing medications.”
    Seriously, this is from the Insurance Benefits Guide for state employees. Heck, this is actually relevant. It shows what a mess our healthcare system is in.

  7. KP

    “He wrings his hands, he shouts, he pushes his way toward the old graybeard shaking his head, disapproving of all this.”
    It’s from Crime and Punishment and I have no idea what it’s referring to because I’m only on page 38 even though I’ve been reading it for two weeks.

  8. KP

    I went to the twitter site and I sure as heck don’t get it either. Who cares what meeting some legislator is at or when David Thomas is finally at home in his own bed with his own laptop?

  9. Brad Warthen

    KP, a boy is trying to keep a horse from being beaten to death. In Crime and Punishment, I mean. It’s one of those scenes of suffering and needless cruelty which Dostoevsky describes with such pathos… it turns out to be only a dream, a reflection of Raskolnikov’s less-than-healthy frame of mind…

  10. TKS

    “In the 600s, a Chinese king had a recipe for combining ice and milk and the treat spread from there.”

  11. Doug Ross

    They’ve got the “twit” in twitter nailed.
    Honestly, who the #$#%# cares what Joe Blow is doing at any moment of the day.
    Put down the Crackberry and do some work.
    Here’s my pg. 56 test — I’ll post two since I picked both books up at the library at lunchtime (see even I can give you too much useless information!).
    From “The Forgotten Man”, Amith Shlaes, a recent book about the Great Depression:
    “They noted that the prosperity seen in the cities was not as visible out in the country and the rapid influence of utilities in the United States did not seem rapid enough to the farming crowd, for even in the 1920’s, many farms did not have power.”
    And from T.C. Boyle’s “The Women”, a historical novel regarding four women who were liked to architect Frank Lloyd Wright: “Dinner was a treasure, the conversation and joy of it, and the Sunday evenings when they all dressed in their finest and sat around the living room or on the balmy nights under the big twin oaks in the courtyard making music or reading aloud from Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson…”
    Twitter that!

  12. Norm Ivey

    Although the gold lettering is stunning, they are rarely offered today at a premium price.
    from Stereo Views–An Illustrated History and Price Guide by John Waldsmith (2nd edition).
    Great topic for a warm Friday afternoon, Brad. I don’t get Twitter, either. I just learned how to text from my daughters. I don’t get the attraction. It doesn’t make my life easier. I can program a speed dial button and get in touch with them far quicker than I can by texting, with less tiny button punching to boot. And I don’t need to find my reading glasses, either.

  13. Pilgrim

    For thought he, had I no more in mine eye, than the saving of my life, ‘twould be the best way to stand.
    ~The Pilgrim’s Progress~
    p.56, s. 5

  14. Brad Warthen

    The thing about this is, while I appreciate the pols who are willing to take part in the Twitter experiment — at least they’re making an effort to communicate — it really goes back in my mind to that guy from Colorado, who actually believes this is a substitute for newspapers.

    Something he also said when boasting about killing the Denver paper was this: “What I would love to get your ideas on . . . is what kind of content do you want your citizen journalists in Congress and your state legislatures to produce for you. What would be valuable? Clearly mainstream media has never told a good story, or a real story about what goes on.

    Your “citizen journalists” who happen to be the politicians themselves?

    You don’t have to make your living working for a newspaper as I do to worry about the idea that politicians reporting on THEMSELVES is somehow an acceptable substitute for reading what third-party observers have to say about them. Hey, if you think the MSM is biased, wait until you get all your info straight from these techno-savvy pols…

  15. jim

    Brad…”hey you whippersnappers, get off my grass!”
    Yeah, this whole internet thing is a fad…it will pass.

  16. bud

    Here’s what we had on the front page of one MSM example:
    An 80s Weekend! (this was about the weather)
    Spring Valley: The Best, By Far
    Sterling Guilty of securities fraud
    Calling someone in the county? It’ll cost you
    Stimulus millions flowing in S.C.
    Economy snapshot 8.1 percent
    On top of the irrelevant front page there was no editorial page. The business section was reduced from the weekday editions. And the sports page had yet another huge photo of the Spring Valley bb victory.
    Not one single bit of news that I had not already heard. Not one. So why is The State still relevant? And why should folks shell out a buck to find out about stuff they knew about hours earlier? Wake up Brad, you’re missing the 21st century.

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