Serenity prayers…
Dear everyone. Please forgive my absence.
In all seriousness, I’ve been working this week on cutting back my time spent online. I appear to have… umm… developed an addiction of sorts.To Twitter.
No, I’m really not kidding.
I’m trying to hammer out the line between “useful tool” and “complete obsession” and I’m finding that clarity requires some distance. (more on that later)
I’ll be back soon, with a clearer head I promise!
August 15th, 2009 at 7:52 am
Twitter took the most incredibly vain part of AOL Instant Messenger (the away message) and turned it into something gruesomely self-centered.
I think we all need to get over ourselves. None of us are so important that we need to report everything we’re thinking all the time.
August 15th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Just read your article on Salon — it’s great and oh-so-true! I haven’t gotten caught up in Twitter, but definitely feel that pull to touch the computer keyboard that you talk about. For a while I had Facebook status updates forming in my head when I was offline. Like you, I realized it was time to scale back.
Of course, as a writer I am composing whole paragraphs while I drive, play, work… Sometimes I wish I could turn that impulse off and just LIVE IN THE MOMENT without trying to figure out how I’m going to treat and preserve it.
My husband is addicted to some online multi-player strategic battle game I don’t understand. We hardly talk anymore, and it sucks! Maybe none of this is as serious as being addicted to meth or something, but it is real, and it can definitely damage relationships. Beware the tweet. : )
August 15th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Just read your article. Great stuff! I, too, tend to get sucked in. I’ve found some balance by limiting most of my Twitter action to texts on my phone. I have a very select few of my Twitter contacts set to send their tweets as texts to my phone, and then I will post tweets via texting. Usually, I will spend a couple minutes a day, quickly browsing the tweet-stream whilst checking my email and other things. Tweeting via the tiny QWERTY on my phone is more time-consuming and means I’m less likely to be doing it. Same with @ replies. And, since I don’t have a data phone, I can’t follow links in tweets. Anyway, it’s seriously cut my time spent on Twitter down. I still feel connected, without being consumed.
August 17th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
When you share a tweet – with or without a link to allow us to dig deeper – it’s valuable to those of us who want to learn, are seeking concurrence or end up being tempted to weigh new ideas. The ease with which we can each “speak” on Twitter makes it essential for each of us to work at using Twitter to “listen” as well. It’s all a part of figuring out the balance. I have enjoyed following your tweets via Twitter so I hope you do not totally retreat from it.