Please help me in my crusade to save Twitter, for its awesomeness is quickly deteriorating… It’s hard to imagine that just 3 short months ago I felt so overwhelmingly positive about my then Twitter experience that I actually dedicated my inaugural blog post to addressing its superiority to Snoozebook. But lately it seems that Twitter’s once hallowed grounds has increasingly become a breeding ground for gratuitous lies, gross exaggeration, lowbrow braggadocios-ness and general tomfoolery.
Take last night for example; the slaying of Osama Bin laden was a great victory for the US intelligence community. Seemingly the entire Twittersphere took to their phones, PCs, and tablets to discuss the breaking news. Suddenly, without license, everybody was a political pundit for the evening…
So whats the big deal? The big deal is that political commentary isn’t meant for everybody. Now I’m not claiming to know everything about current events, nor you anything at all, but I do know that if 75% of your day is spent online tweeting Phaedra from Real housewives of Atlanta to ask for her advice on what you should do about your husband’s cheating ways, this whole current events/political discourse arena is most likely not for you.
I dunno, it’s just that over the past year the only news update I’d previously witnessed you administer was a link leading to the specific cities & dates of Beyoncé’s 2010 world tour.
I guess what I’m saying is that I know which topics of conversation are in my wheelhouse and which are not. Don't get me wrong, I am not above reproach. I too am oft-tempted to lend my 2 cents when conversational topics metriculate outside of my realm of expertise. Still, I somehow manage to practice enough self-discipline to abide by my predetermined guidelines of self-regulation. For example, if I’m at a cocktail party and a conversation about Nuclear Physics breaks out, I’m either going to:
A) Sit & listen and see if I can learn something, or B) Politely excuse myself from the conversation to refresh my drink.
Most likely “B”. Nonetheless, what I’m not going to do is start sophomorically interjecting with unsolicited & uninformed opinions. So the next time a highly relevant news story breaks, and the Twittersphere lights up with activity, ask yourself:
“Self, do I typically get my breaking news from” A) Perez Hilton B) Wendy Williams or C) Steve Harvey
And if you’ve answered yes to any one of these questions, then just do us all a favor and keep quiet because I just honestly cannot comprehend the value of tweeting every word that comes out of Barack Obamas mouth verbatim.
Barack Obama: “Osama Bin Laden is dead.”
You immediately tweet
@IdiotgurlnDC: “Osama Bin Laden is dead” – Barack Obama
Really? I mean the news has only been all over the television & internet for the past hour & a half. During which time the entire country has been anxiously waiting for President Obama to finish reading Sasha and Malia a bedtime story, tuck them into bed, proceed to breaking Michelle off, effectively puttin that ass to sleep, come downstairs, grab the mic, commence to delivering his speech, effortlessly drop the mic on the floor ala Jay Z after his finale at a Madison Square Garden concert, fire up a Newport, pour a glass of Ciroc, and casually strut back to the Oval office as Jeezy's "My President Is Black" crescendos through the P.A. system, serving as background music for his triumphant exit; thus reassuring us that the world is safe, so we too may peaceably join the Obama females in a state of deep, blissful slumber.
Basically, im just suggesting that you stay in your lane.
Okay, now that I got that off my chest, there are just a few more Twitter issues I’d like to address. The first being Black people's affinity to tweeting about Shellfish
New rule I’d like for all of us to try out. Just for this summer. Like a probationary period or something. No tweeting about Shellfish. You can eat it till you regurgitate. Just please dont tweet about it. No Shrimp, no crabs, no lobster, no clams, no mussels. No nothing.
I don’t know what it is with black folk and shellfish. Perhaps we see consuming shellfish as the middle-rung on the ladder signifying our middle-class success; you know, right between landing a job that offers comprehensive health Insurance benefits, and successfully embarking on our annual weekend trip to Miami for the umpteenth year in a row.
Honestly, I really don’t know what it is. And don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a the sweet juices of a Maine lobster as much next as the next guy, but I honestly can’t understand why my timeline has to be innundated with tweets that read “bi-winning” accompanied by a photo attachment of greasy fried shrimp remnant every time you spend $3.99 at Long John Silver’s for a basket of Popcorn Shrimp?
Maybe I’m off. Maybe we have like some sort of genetic predisposition toward shellfish. I mean anything’s possible… I vividly recall one instance at a pot luck office party when a coworker generously provided our department with platter of shrimp cocktail.
One of my Bubba Gump-like, runaway slave coworkers was so overly excited about the prospect of an entire platter of cocktail shrimp that she actually spent the entire afternoon gluttonously devouring cold shrimp on her way to iodine poisoning. By 4pm she was doubled over in such excrutiating pain that an ambulance had to be dispatched to the office. But not before the Resident Office Bible Beater reached into her purse, whipped out a bottle of Anointing oil, laid hands on said shrimp-fiend, and made us all join hands, as she bellowed in tongues; desperately pleading for the 2nd coming of Jesus, the swift recovery of my coworker, and the endangered well-being of the unborn lovechild that was growing in my coworkers poisoned womb.
The integration of Yelp into Twitter is also something that is also causing me agitation. I honestly don’t understand. Once activated, can this “Yelp Check-in” feature not be disabled? My whole timeline is polluted with your Yelp Check-in updates.
@Doin2muchinMD just checked into the Department of Motor Vehicles.
@Doin2muchinMD just checked in at the Post Office.
@Doin2muchinMD just checked into the Hospital because her silly ass poisoned herself & risked the life of her unborn lovechild by overindulging in a platter of grocery-store-bought cocktail shrimp.
Quite honestly, unless your stalker tendencies lead you to unexpectedly check-in with the security guard at the front gate of my Condominium Compound without having been extended an invitation, I honestly couldn’t give a crap where you are.
Oh, and one more thing as long as we’re on the topic of Yelp... Please do not send me a friend request on Yelp… We’re already friends on Facebook, Twitter, BBM, Foursquare, MySpace, Black Planet, Yahoo Messenger, Bump, Live Profile, Gchat and Gchat BUZZ. So although we’re friends on 10 different social networking sites, the obvious reality that neither one of us bothers to exchange even the occasional “hello” on any one of these mediums speaks articulately to the fact that we don’t need to add Yelp as yet another networking site that we will almost certainly mutually agree not to interact on.
And the final Twitter violation I'm seeking to put the kibosh on happens a lot less frequently. It is far more prevalent in "real life", but recently I have noticed it beginning to seep into online discourse... Women who pretend to have boyfriends… Why are you always tweeting about all the fun stuff you and your phantom boyfriend are getting into? Meanwhile, No one but you has ever made acquaintance with the chap.
You even went so far as to create a bogus Twitter page for him. I know its bogus because he has 3,642 tweets & yet mysteriously:
A) He only follows one person. That being you.
B) He only has one follower, which coincidently also happens to be you.
C) His profile picture is a photo of Morris Chestnut... No self-respecting heterosexual man is going to have a photo of Morris Chestnut as his profile pic. So what are you trying to tell me, that you're dating Morris Chestnut?
I know that as a result of Edris Elba's meteoric rise, Morris Chestnut could quite possibly be living under a rock in DC, as he hasnt received a callback from his agent for a paying gig since like '02, but I still dont believe you're dating him... Look, the jig is up.
You know you don’t have a boyfriend... I know you don’t have a boyfriend... You know that I know that you don’t have a boyfriend... I know that you know that I know that you don’t have a boyfriend.... So lets just do ourselves a favor and put an end to this whole charade.
I even wasted 10 minutes of my life sorting through your Facebook albums... 15,000 photos of weddings, anniversaries, graduations and club pics of you and your girls provacatively executing booty poses in front of airbrushed backdrops of Cadillac sedans and Giant bottles of Hennessy, and not a single solitary strand of evidence suggesting the existence of your significant other.
No long form birth certificate. No Social Security number. No annoying Yelp Check-ins. Not a trace.
Ladies, allow me to be crystal clear. I'm not going to sugarcoat this. If you have a man, but no one but you ever sees your man, then you don't really have a man. What you have is a jumpoff.
Okay so that about covers it. I mean it really doesn't. But the rest will have to wait. Next time we'll address how annoying people who constantly tweet about being "Too blessed to be stressed" & "Blessed & highly favored" are.
Ladies, allow me to be crystal clear. I'm not going to sugarcoat this. If you have a man, but no one but you ever sees your man, then you don't really have a man. What you have is a jumpoff.
Okay so that about covers it. I mean it really doesn't. But the rest will have to wait. Next time we'll address how annoying people who constantly tweet about being "Too blessed to be stressed" & "Blessed & highly favored" are.
But for today, let us use this as a jumping off point... I believe that by abstaining from online rhetoric such as the previously documented examples, we have an opportunity to bring Twitter back from the brink of destruction.
"There should be a throne for us, but for now that's a whole different zone from us."
No comments:
Post a Comment