B.T.

Thanks to my dear friend Eddie for introducing me to this:



Now, I'm the first person to complain about Twitter. I never understood the point--yes, some people use it for quick news blasts, sometimes your friends say something funny (theoretically, that is; I'm not actually on Twitter). But honestly? People do not need to know the minutiae of your existence. No matter who you are--celebrity, journalist, accountant, or copy machine from an awesome show--your life is probably not that interesting. The people who do seem to care about Ashton Kutcher's Tweets are, I'm sorry, the sort of people with whom I do not wish to interact.

But Twitter just recently blew the fuck up. Before that, there was Facebook. I loved Facebook. Way easier to keep in touch with people than, say, via e-mail. And the introduction of status updates was kind of fun for a while, too. I'd put up random ones like "...is dead" or some apropos song lyric. I never put up actual locations or said what I was actually doing at the time because, um, who cares? Yes, I would roll my eyes whenever I saw someone using it in that exhibitionistic way, but it was easy enough to ignore. Of course, the new Facebook design makes it impossible to ignore, so thanks for fucking that up, Faceberg.

Even before Facebook, though, people had this compulsive need to share shit about their life to people who are, essentially, strangers. See: Xbox Live.

That leads me to believe this is a generational thing. If Generation X was the "me" generation, then we, the so-called "Millennials" (God I hate that term) are the "me, me, me!" generation. Life is no longer about connecting with people and interacting with them in a meaningful fashion; it's about people seeing you interacting with people on an entirely superficial, fictional level. It's like throwing a surprise party for someone, but inviting only your friends instead of theirs. You don't want to see the look of surprised joy on your friend's face, you want to see your friends' reactions when you tell them about this great thing you're doing for someone else.

And that just makes me sad.