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.

You've Got Facebook

So, Nielsen and THR say social networking is pwning e-mail. To which I say: Duh.

That horrible "Business Exchange" travesty aside, this is actually a good thing. I've never understood why online advertising hasn't been nearly as successful as print advertising was in its heyday (this is a good study about that), and I think that's one of the reasons why most magazines still have horrible sites. (Look, God knows I love EW, and PopWatch is a great blog, but I still hate the way the homepage looks. And, full disclosure, I used to work there and write for PopWatch.)

I still mostly try to keep work and Facebook separate (though everyone at EW was so chill, I broke that rule for them), but the fact is, it's the best way to casually keep in contact with people. The beauty of the internet (yeah, I refuse to capitalize it) is its innately casual nature. Plus, you get the benefit of other people seeing you interacting. It's like, after years of making fun of computer nerds for sitting inside and not having friends, everyone decided to go about being as public with their affection as possible. Since, ultimately, we're a deeply voyeuristic society, it all turns into this ridiculous (but sometimes entertaining) circle-jerk of internet activity. Now you know why I don't Twitter.

This is why I firmly believe what my favorite TWoP recapper Jacob says about it: "The internet actually is just a very large bathroom wall, and anybody who cares about this shit or goes after their employees based on it has bigger problems than their basic inability to understand how the world works." Amen, sir. (For ruminations on why people treat the internet like a bathroom wall in the first place, please see John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.)

Maybe that's why advertisers still aren't sold on the online thing? Too many fuckwads? But you'd think those fuckwads would buy more stuff. Hmmm...