I know I may be the only one, but I really don’t get Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram. (Now, get off my lawn!) I mean, I understand the theory behind them; I just can’t see myself using them. I remember I used to beg my younger brother to send me invitations to the latest internet crazes (eg: Gmail, MySpace, Facebook, etc.) and took pride in being, if not the earliest adopter, at least an early-ish adopter. No more.
Let me air my grievances.
I am annoyed, TO THIS DAY, that Hapa Papa convinced me to sign up for Twitter. He said it would help promote my blog. I suppose it would if I tweeted anything other than my blog posts. Or, had conversations with people back and forth. Here’s the thing, though. Why would I have a public conversation? If I wanted to talk to someone, I would just text/email/IM (does anyone still do this?) them IN REAL LIFE. Oh, I don’t really know them? THEN WHY AM I HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH THEM?
Ok, I guess I have “conversations” with people I don’t know already when I participate in forums or comment on articles, but there usually is a huge separation in time. Versus in my mind, Twitter is more like a real time conversation. I don’t know, people. I don’t really use it correctly.
What also annoys me is that Hapa Papa is all proud of the fact that he has amassed a decent Twitter following. He has goals for how many followers he gets and how many tweets he tweets/twits/twitters. This would be great if not for the fact that OMG HIS TWEETS ARE SO FUCKING BORING. He even admits it. They are 99.9% work related and that means he’s tweeting or re-tweeting articles on web testing and optimization. OMG I KNOW THIS IS HIS JOB BUT WHY? I WANT TO STAB MY EYES OUT THEY ARE SO BORED BY HIS TWEETS. Sorry. My capslock got stuck.
I mean, it’s great that he’s got all these followers, but unless one of these “followers” makes him a sandwich, I’m not impressed.
Furthermore, I really can’t imagine anyone wanting to read what I tweet/twit/twitter. Hapa Papa‘s tweets may be boring, but at least they serve a purpose and are useful. Who in their right mind is going to want to read drivel such as, “Gamera just peed in the potty! YAY! #pottytraining #nocharts #barebottom #iliveontheedge.”
Granted, I post such drivel on Facebook, but that’s only blasted out to 557 of my closest friends. (Ok, the actual number is much smaller than that since most of the people on my Friends list are shunted into Acquaintances and therefore cannot see most of my posts. But you get my drift.) It isn’t blasted across the interwebz so that any schmuck can read it for all of posterity. Plus, this 140 character count would require too much thinking, clarity and lack of wordiness – all of which I try to avoid in my life. I very much enjoy my non-thinking, opaque verbosity, thank you.
As for Pinterest, when I first got on Pinterest, I pinned quite a few things on boards and stuff, but after a day or two of that, I just stopped caring. I have no desire to see endless pictures of people who organize, cook, dress, DIY, craft, and EVERYTHING better than I could ever possibly on my best day. I suppose since I never cared for physical magazines in these genres, it makes sense that I don’t care about them in their online forms.
And Instagram? I don’t get it. How is it different than posting a pic to Facebook? Or Flikr? Or Picasa? And now, because I just typed that sentence, I actually went to Instagram’s site to read what it was about. (How mortifying. Not the seeking out knowledge part. Just the fact that I really didn’t know what Instagram was but still don’t care and insulted it.) Bah. Even after reading what Instagram does, I don’t care.
Clearly, because I don’t care about these products, they’re not geared towards me. I’m sure you’ll all tell me in the comments what an idiot I am for not doing XYZ and that I totally don’t understand social media or puppies or ANYTHING THAT IS AWESOME AND GOOD. I accept. I am totally OK with this. What I am MORE interested in, however, is what things everyone you know likes and uses but you think is just dumber than a bag of hammers. Don’t be shy now.
