attention twitter users: nobody cares
April 9, 2008
If you are a twitter user, I warn you now, you may find this offensive.
NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU.
Can anyone tell me what is so special about the twitter lifestyle? Are we that far up in our own asses that we really think people actually give a sugar about what we’re doing every minute of the day?
- 7:00pm: Just joined twitter. Sweet. Now I can keep a log of every worthless thing that happens to me.
- 7:01pm: I just realized that no one really cares about what I do, and if they do, they should really get a life.
- 7:02pm: My last post on twitter. Now I can get back to actually living my life.
If you are one of these people who love updating your social circle on every petty thing that happens in your life, then perhaps you can share some insight as to why you think people actually care.
Don’t get me wrong, I try and embrace all I can with new technologies trends and whatnot, and I understand that twitter has been around for a long time (2006), but come on, why do you feel the need to jot every little meaningless detail of your life? I mean, who really cares about what you just finished eating, or what you just finished watching, or that your cat just took a piss on your favorite pair of jeans?!
Let me get this straight, you get on twitter, you get a bunch of your stupidest friends to join, then you can all share what you are doing with an up-to-the-minute relay of your meaningless life? Whatever happened to the telephone? or maybe even a visit to a friend? or an old-fashioned blog post?
Do you think people before twitter really cared about what their friends were doing at every given moment?
Am I alone on this? Can anyone understand why they feel the need to let their “social circle” know what is happening? If you are a twitter user, then maybe you can shed some light, because frankly I really don’t get it.
I just stopped by your blog and thought I would say hello. I like your site design. Looking forward to reading more down the road.
Robert Michel
Thank you Robert. I appreciate your comment and look forward to keep you entertained!
I’m on Twitter. I think it’s really interesting to find out what people are up to, even regular, everyday stuff is nice to read. At this level, it’s best limited to people you actually know, but as none of my friends are interested in Twitter, I used it to keep in touch with people around the world quickly and easily. But that is only the tip of the iceberg.
Twitter is great for passing on cool news/blog articles you’ve read, as well as things such as videos and pictures.
And Twitter can often be the first to report news. Remember the San Fran mudslides? They were first reported by Twitter users, before any of the TV News stations or websites reported them. The Kent earthquake? Again, the news broke first on Twitter.
The fact is, with the amount of attention it’s been getting, and the number of users (plus people using similar services such as Jaiku or Pownce), it’s clear that many people DO care.
your are a sad act please get a life
Don’t get me wrong Jamie; I think that the idea of twitter is amazing. Being able to provide valuable updates to a massive amount of people with a few lines of text is pretty cool. It is not so much a blog, it’s now known as a microblog. To be fair, this is exactly how I think twitter is for
loserspeople with too much time on their hands:• Wanting attention from your social circle by filling them in on the details of your mundane life
• Actively seeking what other people are doing in order to pass the time of your boring life
• Actually being interested in other people’s ordinary daily routines is scary
• Satisfying your ego by updating your circle with meaningless information
Basically, I think that the average twitter users are self-satisfying ego-centric people who really feel the need to be accepted and heard by others and do so by posting little snippets of their life.
Now, I understand that this isn’t everyones’ use for twitter. Here are some ways that it can actually benefit users and readers:
• Promotion: what better way to advertise your business and create a public personality than to keep people interested with tidbits of useless banter
• News-worthy: as you mentioned, Jamie, news happens everywhere, what better way to make a micro post from anywhere to the “world”. I could see a news caster of some sort finding this useful.
• Live updates of events: if there was ever an event you missed, someone can give you full coverage without putting much effort.
I’m sure there are other “useful” ways to use this service; I just can’t bring myself to use it.
I think that the worst part about all of this is its simplicity. If only I knew to make a program that satisfies people’s ego… I could have written it in a weekend and made a fortune.
But the simplicity is part of it’s brilliance, and the reason WHY it’s been so huge. Take a look at MySpace and Facebook. What’s the number 1 reason people give for hating those services – too much crap. Twitter strips out everything that isn’t necessary and just gets down to ‘What are you doing?’. Personally I’m sick to death of getting App requests on FB and bulletins on MySpace.
In the original post you mentioned that you might as well post a blog post. But that would either be an exceptionally short blog post (whereas ‘tweets’ are short by nature) or an incredible amount of filler.
I’m not trying to push anyone into using the service, but I disagree with labeling the users as losers. If you think about it, you could argue that bloggers are all ego-centric people deluded enough to think that their opinions actually matter. But that wouldn’t be fair, either.
Facebook and MySpace (the biggest social networks in the world) both have status updates, and that feature is regularly used on both those sites, so their millions of users care about what each other are up to. And even blogs have an element of sharing what you’ve been up to – so some bloggers care too.
[...] I was taking the piss out of people who call twitter users ‘losers’, ‘wankers’, ‘morons’, ‘sweaty lard balls’, ‘fags‘ & other bad things. [...]
I agree with you on most levels.
Twitter for the masses is indeed a bunch of useless crap. No-one cares.
But for business/high profile people it can be a godsend, the simplicity of it all I mean.
And no, I don’t read any Twitters and I don’t Twit myself. Like you said, where in earth would you get the time to do all that?
It’s the same with FB imo.
When you start having to much friends in your list, it feels like a second job to keep up on all the status-updates and messages etc…
I find it odd that Twitterites have anything useless to pass on since too many are glued to their PC or Cell screens waiting on the next twitter to come by.
Sample conversation:
7:01 (CindyHasNoLife) Sitting her bored waiting for BobHasNoLife to get on.
7:02 (CindyHasNoLife) Just passed gas
7:03 (BobHasNoLife) Cool, gas…driving there now.
7:04 (BobHasNoLife) Oh crap, just ran into another car.
7:05 (CindyHasNoLife) Was it there fault? I know we were talking but did you notice if they pulled out in front of you.
7:05 (BobHasNoLife) No I need a Blackberry so I can see it better while driving.
7:06 (BobHasNoLife) Stupid cop trying to talk to me while I’m letting you guys know. You would think he could twitter the accident report.
7:06 (BobHasNoLife) WTH, the cop is taking me away, says its my…
7:07 – 9:04 Constant repeats of
(CindyHasNoLife) BobHasNoLife are you there?
I wouldn’t even go as far as saying it’s a great news tool. It makes it even easier to get out the WRONG information and start a Bad Ball of Crap rolling. The media puts out enough false info as it is and they are trained. We don’t need the latest Twitter News Spam Alert.
Nice article by the way
I agree! We only get an unknown number of hours of life, and to waste it by being a Twit is ridiculous.
I read about twitter and signed up (for about an hour!) What a worthless pile of shite – as you said: who friggin’ cares whether you just took a dump or drank a cup of coffee. These people need to find something useful to do with their lives.
LOL, yeah Twitter sucks.
Don’t tweet me bro.
What’s Twitter?
Twitter is a service for people who like to twat.
the only people i know (as in physically have met and spent a significant amount of time with) who use twitter are narcissists with an agenda.
i take onboard all the points about simplicity and immediacy and i’m a lover of technology BUT… with twitter there is no interaction, there are no conversations. its simply a stream of unanswered statements. that is why it doesn’t work compared to facebook, myspace or even a conventional blog where you can leave comments (like this one).
“narcissists with an agenda.” Perfectly put Ron.
My thoughts exactly. To modify an old phrase, “It’s better to be suspected of being a fool, than to go on Twitter and remove all doubt.”
I couldn’t agree more. From the start I knew it was worthless, and for nosy people….
I have never seen the reason for twitter apart from it being used to stalk someone or just wanting attention.
Don’t all those Twits have a life? I wish I had time to waste like they do.
Haha, I totally agree. I don’t get those people who are posting stuff there.
I actually think they are kinda sad people because they think that someone cares about that which just means that they don’t get enough attention IRL. But that’s just my point of view.
Thank you. No really, I mean it, thank you. The truth is spoken. Twitter and its pathetic cousin, Facebook, provide a mouthpiece for monomaniacs who need to take a big bite of reality pie. We don’t care what you had for afternoon snack and we don’t care that you’re happy that the two reporters were released from North Korea thanks to President Clinton. And we don’t care about the difficulty of your putt on hole 15 – right this minute, no less – you, monomaniacal, sad person. Do we really need friends like this? Twitter — that’s embarrassing!
You said it like it is, Cousin Steve.
thank you for blogging about something that needed to be said. twitter sucks. the people who use it suck more.
i agree
People are so in need of attention and validation they feel the need to post every little detail.
I don’t really agree with the whole who cares thing. Other people who have no life care.
7:08 made twitter account
7:10 hey I’m on twitter
7:11 just hung myself.
[...] Don’t think your any better you twitter twits… Fred’s got you covered too. [...]
Well, Truth is, some people do like twitters… and It’s like everything else in this world.
Some people who do not like to socialize through the web will not find Twitter’s service usefull. Others, that have unwanted limitations (distance, work, etc) need to socialize in other ways…
Take the example of somebody living abroad, in order to get in touch with family in a snap of a finger, they opoen twitter, or facebook, or linked in…
Good Post
I agree that there are people who are cut off by distance and other factors, but how can they have meaningful communication with other people in tiny 140(?) character sentences which are on public display? That’s the kind of interaction which email is well suited to.
Twitter is designed to enable someone who has no life at all to tell all their friends, “Just ate sandwich from new deli. Hated bits of hard grain in bread. Won’t go there again!!”. and irrelevant narcissistic rubbish like that.
The medium of communication should not be blamed , it should be the user. As you put it some people would write, ““Just ate sandwich from new deli. Hated bits of hard grain in bread. Won’t go there again!!”.”, making twitter look bad. But digest this, an American reporter who was detained in Egypt updated this twitter to “arrested” just after they took him in a car. His friends noticed and immediately contacted the American embassy down there and they got him out of the mess. Therefore, it is not Twitter’s fault, it is yours and mine faults.
Twitter is primarily designed for people to constantly put little comments on display for everyone to read. A narcissist’s dream, to make themselves feel important.
I agree that it can be used for conveying important information, but that’s not its primary purpose. The irrelevant throwaway comments vastly outweigh anything important which goes through there.
It’s not your fault or the fault of others here, that Twitter is exactly what it was designed to be.
Whats almost up there with twitter is comment threads, some are useful but most are a waste of space such as YouTube comments.
Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, IMing…all huge wastes of time and used by mostly boring losers with far too much time on their hands. Got no use for them or these times sinks.
OMG! I was soooooo thinking the same thing. Twitter is so for losers! Who give a crap if you’re stuck in traffic or that you’re going out to shop. Tip: TRY ZOLOFT!
I personally don’t tweet although I did sign up for an account a while ago just to see what it was like. The main theme of all these comments and other complaints is “no one cares about your mundane details.” This is repeated constantly and often with anger, as if a non-twitter user was sitting at work, reading their important email, when an intrusive “tweet” popped up on the screen, forcing them to read about some stranger’s toenail fungus. You have to purposely go out of your way to follow someone on Twitter! So if you follow someone, you more than likely do care about their mundane lives.
Social networking isn’t all about narcissist’s feeding their massive egos. It’s about staying in touch. If 2 people would talk about a crappy sandwich one of them had if they were in the same room, why is it a big deal to tweet back and forth about it? It’s like a slow, drawn out conversation between people. Now, I will agree that a lot of the tweets I have read from people I know were not earth shattering news. They were actually kind of boring. This is not Twitter’s fault. Some of you have got to know people who are not the most intriguing persons to have a conversation with, regardless if it’s in back and forth emails, in person, or on a phone.
I know I’m rambling but I have one more point. How people spend their free time is not anyone’s business. I play a lot video games and spend a lot of time on the internet. Some would say I have “no life” because of this. Yet I am healthy, happily married with a child on the way, have a successful job, great friends, and am very happy. If someone wants to tweet 50 times a day, who’s to judge? Just like you think tweeting is a waste of time, Twitter users might pick something you do as a waste. TO EACH HIS OWN. Sorry for shouting.
Their are narcissists on Twitter, no doubt. The people who want complete strangers to follow them so they can read someone’s attempt at being witty and snarky regarding EVERYTHING, those people can crawl into a hole for all I care.