I Am Now a Twit

Not long ago I posted an article that was critical of social networking sites such as Facebook—or to be more precise, the banal content people post on such sites. I got an avalanche of angry emails in response—“avalanche,” as defined by this site’s usual traffic, meaning two emails. A couple of you pointed out my hypocrisy for criticizing these sites when I’m on them myself. I guess the real difference between me and other users is that I don’t write a post every time I have a bowel movement.

Still, I’ve reconsidered my position. My real objection to these sites was that they too often substitute for genuine face-to-face or voice-to-voice human contact. And that, I’ve since decided, is exactly what makes them so wonderful. 

I’m old enough to remember the days before email, and even computers themselves. Back in the day, if you wanted to communicate with someone at work, you either had to phone them, go see them in person, or worst of all, roll a sheet of paper into the Selectronic and type them a memo. A memo!

When computers came along, they quickly and mercifully rendered typewriters obsolete, although I resented them for ending my addiction to sniffing Wite-Out. Later came email. In the early Nineties, when I learned that the small agency I worked for was getting email, I laughed. What a waste of time, I thought, with my usual keen foresight. It seemed ridiculous to have an email network for 20 people working in a building with a maximum distance of 100 feet between us.

Two weeks later, I fell in love with email. I discovered that I no longer had to see my supervisor’s hideous chimpmunk visage and listen to her narcissistic stories and her mispronunciation of words in her irritating Illinois accent. And no longer did I have to endure to the business manager’s Forrest Gump drawl or withstand the reek of his Old Spice cologne. I could simply send them an email and wait for their reply. Boo-yeah!

And now my opinion on social networking sites has been turned upside down. I recently visited some younger friends in Wisconsin whom I hadn’t seen in ages. My friend Brad has become an ardent Twit (or is it Twitterer?) and texter, and gave his thumbs a good workout on his Blackberry while I was there. (That's not as naughty as it sounds.) He mentioned that he was texting his mother, so I asked him the question I’ve been dying to ask someone much younger than I am: Since you’re using your cell phone anyway, why not just call her? His answer was like an epiphany.

“Because,” Brad said, “If I text her, I control the length of the communication.” The clouds parted, the moon of truth shone bright, and I saw the light. I slapped myself on the forehead.

The real value of this technology is that it gives you near-total control of the communication! Through Facebook and the like, you can “talk” to friends and family members whom you care about, but who annoy you after five minutes. Genius! Perfect tools for both gregarious airheads and misanthropes like me. I had become an instant convert.

Now if I can only get my mother to read text messages…

P.S. If you’re interested in knowing the just how exciting my life really is, follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/angrybaldman