I know I'm not the only one who must see this as a ridiculous waste of time. Why does the Library of Congress think humans in the future will want to see these things?
The library that holds the writings of 23 presidents, Jefferson's personal library, The Gutenberg Bible, the 1507 map that first labeled America, rough drafts of the Declaration of Independence, and uncountable other rare, precious, and important documents, which will now be joined by tweets such as, oh, say:
- "bored. wsh i hd a ps2. xbox sux"
- "on bus. tivo dwts so i can c beginin."
- "fk u i h8 u ur a ass"
- "jst saw seth green on st. short!"
- "eating a sandwich with ned."
- "thnk we shud c other peeple."
- "omg!!!!! poo on flr in subwy wtf!!! dens stped in it, lmfao!! hes nahc! so gross & funy lol!! gmab wwdt pshdd? ttyl byob!!!"
Tweets will be stored in Main Tweeting Room (formerly American Folklife Center)
Hopefully, people researching our era in the future will just give up after they read a couple billion. As of today, 5 million tweets are sent out every day. I hope the future can't understand why we'd want to save announcements that we're at the hair place or just trimmed our toenails, because that'll mean this fad passed and we realized we don't need to tell everyone exactly what we're doing every minute of the day.
It'll mean the future is wiser and understands life more, knows what's interesting and what's mind-numbingly boring, knows that this nonstop chatter about nothing isn't worth paying attention to. Basically, if there's to be any hope for the future, they'll be just like me.
It'll mean the future is wiser and understands life more, knows what's interesting and what's mind-numbingly boring, knows that this nonstop chatter about nothing isn't worth paying attention to. Basically, if there's to be any hope for the future, they'll be just like me.
@SCOTT is sitting around waiting for a package and had some time to write a blog which is much more valuable than twi *
*Address made up. I have no Twitter account.
(c) 2010 Scott Teel. All rights reserved.
I am pretty sure this is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I am on twitter mainly for blog giveaway purposes and I rarely ever go on, and have no idea why anyone follows me. I went on at first in hopes of stalking Dexter and the Girl's Next Door, that didn't work out so well. Anyhoo-my point is that I have no point. This is stupid.
ReplyDeleteOne might argue that it's an invaluable insight into what average people were doing and saying in the early 21st century, but this is a terrible argument precisely because it's true. There's maybe a need to know how we lived and our common activities but not to know every mundane stupid thing everyone who tweets had to say.
ReplyDeleteI've got a book called Letters of the Century that came out in 2000. It's a collection of hundreds of letters sent during the 20th century (and some e-mails) written by the famous, influential, infamous, and just average people of that 100 years. Some of the letters are well-known and had huge impacts on history (approval to drop the atomic bomb) some were private letters between sisters, but all of them, long or short, are a real glimpse into the minds and hearts of the people who wrote them and were living at the time. Tweets may be clever sometimes (like the haiku tweets) but they can't really do much to illuminate our time, and they devastate grammar (grampar isn't too happy either).
Or maybe I'm short-sighted, like the HP (or maybe IBM) guy in the 60s who said there would be a global market for around 7 computers in the future. We collect autographs, which are mostly just someone's signature. Although those are cherished because the actual person held the paper and wrote their name, it was there with them 200 years ago, they have a physical connection to it. A tweet is like seeing someone's name typed out on your computer screen nd being told they typed it themself. So? The version I'm seeing is just a reproduction of that word on my own screen. The author never touched it. No one touched it. And that's partly why they don't touch me. They are nothing, about nothing.
too much. we are being groomed to become a nation of idiots... i'd say we're 64% there. yay us!
ReplyDeleteHeh heh...poo...you can't go wrong with poo for funny...
ReplyDeleteSimon, at least we're being groomed. So we're still on level with the apes, who also groom each other. Take that, de-evolution!
I lost interest in twitter! All those social networkings are becoming the same! I am getting really sick of it! Why have so many of them so we can really get addicted to it and then complain that there are too many people in the psychiatrist's chair who can't cope! LOL
ReplyDeleteLOL. L8er allig8er!
ReplyDeleteLMAO hahahah
Okay, I need to stop now...Great post and blog!
Hopefully, it's a passing fad, Andrea. Like pet rocks were.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Hope. I'd tweet to everyone I know that people liked this blog, but...ya know... :-)
I had twitter for a little while, and never tweeted (dumb) about what I was doing, just little quips and random funny things I was thinking. I saved all my tweets as a blog post (because they were great one liners, in my brain at least) and got off the site because I hate the bologna sandwich posts that everyone seems to love.
ReplyDeleteI signed up for Facebook for a few reasons, and am sad to see that FB is basically a huge twitter page. Boo to that. And people ask me why I never update my page to let other people know what I'm doing. Well, it's because I hate seeing what other people are doing and I don't want them to know where I am or how I feel. dammit.
Anyway, I was going to say all this when I saw this post but then I was going to blog about it but then I have had no time to blog lately so I figured I'd just blog here, sort of. And also get back to you about the post I just put up on the Urbanity blog and let you know that you win the $1 prize for using "kerning". The churches here (and everywhere I'd imagine- or at least I'd see them that way because I'm a heathen who likes to make fun of organized religion) are so ridiculous and I can just imagine what sort of yokel is responsible for those word boards each week.
oh, also, it was only about 9pm, but it was a rainy night so no one was out.
ReplyDeletelooooool you are too funny!
ReplyDelete