This Is Your Brain on Twitter

Two weeks ago, on a Friday night around midnight, I was loitering on the sidewalk outside a San Francisco bar with two friends, about to head home but not quite ready to call it a night. A guy standing nearby on the sidewalk told us that that our red, green, and blue jackets, respectively, made us look like the lightbeams that create a color spectrum on television sets and computers. It's hard to imagine a geekier pick-up line than "You look like RGB!" But that's what passes for flirtation in 2009 San Francisco in the (waning?) era of web 2.0. He wanted to take a picture of us and upload it to Flickr.

As a writer who also works a product manager in social media, I know the web 2.0 type.

I quickly realized that this web 2.0 boy was part of the Twitter cult, or, as they call themselves, the Twitterati.

The Twitterati are in full effect in San Francisco, Brooklyn, Austin, Portland, and Seattle, where members live their lives as performance art. They exist, therefore they tweet.

Whenever they watch a sunset, eat something delicious, or feel disappointed by a product, they tap out a message on their phones or laptops. Some of them tweet a few times a day, some as many as ten. Or they twitpic, uploading photos. They also seem to believe Twitter is going to revolutionize our lives.

I was looking for a bit more excitement to cap off my evening, and now I had found it. My friends went home and web 2.0 and I hung out on the sidewalk for another hour. First we talked about where we live and what we do, but then, about Twitter! His unself-conscious fervor fascinated me. I played anthropologist, listening to him gush about how Twitter was ushering in a new era of connection that we so desperately needed after the Bush era of fear and division.

I explained that I have an account but don't tweet much because my friends aren't on the service. I'm an active user of Facebook. But Twitter freaks me out, or rather, confuses me. It's Facebook stripped down to status updates, published to a bunch of strangers who are "following me." What would I say to them? I wondered, Why do you feel the need to share what you're eating for lunch? How do you ever get into a "flow state" when you are constantly packaging your experience for public consumption? What are you so excited about?

My new friend told me that Twitter is about the sharing of "peak experiences." He said that among the Twitterati, there is an unspoken rule that you don't tweet just about work or to promote yourself. As a result, his social life has been transformed. He goes to parties where everyone tweets, he is able to talk to people in a much more expansive way. He already knows about the luscious tomatoes they are growing, the new band they are crushed out on, the waves they heard crashing down outside their hotel room several nights before. Conversation goes to a much deeper level.

Hmmmm. I asked to see his Twitter stream. Most of it was stuff like "continuing a multi-day crankfest on my game" and "brainstorms with @neb and late night iPhone code frenzy. Successful day complete. going AFK." I couldn't find any obvious peak experiences moments, but hey, maybe one person's epiphany is another person's code frenzy?

A few moments after we parted ways, I got an email that he was "following" me on Twitter. I drove home feeling curious. What were these peak moments the Twitterati were experiencing? Were their lives more fun and enlightening than mine, or were they just marketing their lives 140 characters at a time, and therefore appreciating them more?

On Monday at work I started to amuse myself by searching for peak moments in everyday life. For example, I admitted to my cubemates that I didn't know what "jump the shark" meant. Greg and Adam were amazed. I looked it up on Wikipedia, learning that "jump the shark" means: "the point in a TV show or movie series' history where the plot veers off into absurd story lines or out-of-the-ordinary characterizations."

Adam told me I should have known since just two weeks ago, I sent an (ignored) Facebook friend request to Henry Winkler! He was a friend of a Facebook friend, and as it turns out, "jump the shark" originated with an episode in which the Fonz tried to jumps over a shark while water-skiing. You see how much fun you can have at work? Total peak moment!

Maybe Twitter would become a source of ongoing banal, everyday peak moments if I had a duty to articulate them to others (to accrue more followers). Thus my tweet: "peak moment alert (what twitter is all about): learning the origins of "jump the shark" http://tinyurl.com/82qca" But then six minutes later I tweeted: "feeling insecure: wondering if my peak moments are peak enough."

In a moment of euphoria, I tweeted: "I have finally found the twitter light. I embrace total giddy lightness and time-wasting inanity." I tweeted when I got IM spam: "Best spam im ever, from sloppysalmon: 'Caution: Care Bears do not actually care very much.'" I tweeted in Portuguese. I tweeted six times in a day! Could I give myself a high just by tweeting?

It's my job to understand web 2.0. I decided to move on to the next level of Twitter self-organization, the Twitter version of chatrooms. I joined a weekly event called "#editorchat" where freelance writers and editors discussed the effects of layoffs on publishing and journalism.

I was having yet another peak moment (now that my standards had dropped). Seemingly smart people, even an editor from the New York Times, gather to discuss such a deep topic in 140 characters or less! I joined in, tweeting: "Hi! I'm a writer, wondering what kind of convo is possible here. Is this the trendy version of a chatroom, or . . . ?". People welcomed me. I felt warm, loved, recognized, part of a community!

For a second. Or two.

This must have been the turning point in my love affair with Twitter, from peak to low. I had overdone it. I felt like I was going to have a seizure watching 60 tweets refresh every thirty seconds on the screen. I needed to get away from my computer.

That night, a disturbing thing happened. At 3 am, I semi-woke, finding my brain was restructured into a stream where I was waiting for the latest 140 character outburst from the random collection of people I follow--colleagues, old lovers, the guy I know who is building a space elevator. I was dreaming in Twitter.

The static electricity of all these quick, fragmentary thoughts made me feel more jittery and caffeinated than if I had drunk three lattes before bed. I spent between the next four hours waiting for something, but I couldn't figure out what. All I knew was that I wasn't satisfied. I thought of cradling my cuddly iPhone with me in bed. I could read tweets in the middle of the night. That thought terrified me. I felt like I was being watched, if not by others, than by myself, scanning through my existence for the next Twitterable moment. I couldn't sleep for longer than two hours at a time.

I described dreaming in Twitter to my co-worker Greg the next morning. He provided an apt metaphor: an animal in a cage, waiting for the next sugar pellet. Another co-worker walked by and asked what's going on. I told him things had taken a direction for the worse. "I'm dreaming in Twitter." "Me too!" he said. He confessed that he has always felt like he has ADD, but now, over the last month, his ADD is "increasing exponentially." Mine is too. Writing this essay was like writing War and Peace.

Two weeks after our first meeting, I bumped into my web 2.0 friend again. This time, standing outside another club in San Francisco. "Hey!" we greeted each other. "You've been using Twitter more!" he said, with the gleam of a missionary. "Yeah," I said, "but just professionally." He looked crestfallen.

We waved goodbye, with the unstated implication, "See you on Twitter." Will I be there? Anything is possible if my real friends join. But I sincerely hope not. I already have an email addiction. I don't want another reason to log on last thing at night and first thing in the morning. I'm not dreaming about the next email. I don't want to be dreaming about the next tweet.

Sasha Cagen is author of Quirkyalone: A Manifesto for Uncompromising Romantics and To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us. Learn more at quirkyalone.net and todolistblog.com.

Comments

[Roomer]

I like Twitter.

The first two pages of "commentary" were filled by a bunch of antisocial derogatory statements about Twitter from readers who are either jealous or too busy to bother with Twitter. I refer to these as "lazy" comments. How much evidence does it take for someone to hate something? Not much, in my experience. We even have a a word for these people. HATERS. "Hating" on everything from celebrity fashion sense to international monetary policy.

And these folks are practicing irony to the extreme. Choosing to voice their negative opinion of a website about another website. I mean, if one has bothered to express an opinion in a comment on a blog (which few are likely to actually read), how is that any different from tweeting about what you had for lunch?

I am a news junkie. Twitter has expanded the breadth of my news-gathering. At the same time it has connected me with the on-the-fly ideas of politicians, journalists, bloggers, actors, producers, musicians, artists, gadget geeks, and everyday folks. I may have never been privy to these ideas otherwise. So despite Sasha Cagen's condescension, I will continue to enjoy Twitter, & look forward to July 5th, when, contrary to an earlier comment, I predict Twitter will still be going strong.

[Subol Shrestha]

I think the social networking has gripped and affected everyone. I have a facebook addiction. I simply log on to it, even though I do not do anything on it. Then few minutes later, I don't know what happens , but I quit the stuff I was working on and just use facebook for nothing.
Well, I think social networking are ruling over us than we ruling over them. So, my only advice would be engage anything like reading a novel or traveling rather than spending time in these sites. Moreover, deactivating them is the best option.

[mckinley]

If you are important enough to publish to the world your thoughts and your descriptions of your life experiences (some stranger pointing out the color of your jackets as you hang out on the street? Really?), why can't I be?

[citizensrus]

I don't trust twitter. It's timing and the mainstream media promotion of it speaks "establishment" to me. Am I wrong?

[TurtleGuy]

I don't get the point of any of this social-not-working nonsense. Twitter by far the worst. People think those they communicate with are their "friends", it could be a pc based bot program for all they know!

The delusions of grandeur, the overinflated sense of self worth are just sickening. Purely for people who enjoy the smell of their own gas, and that's it!

[Ohsherrie]

I seriously just don't get Twitter.

[Roci]

Feh. Who needs Twitter? It's another lame, and mostly miserable excuse to yank people away from real social interaction and substitute hi-tech, low thinking, low feeling for honest and personal interaction. Text messaging and the like has its place, but when people begin to live, eat, and breathe this stuff to the point where the time they spend communicating with flesh and blood people is diminished, something is very wrong. I had a chance to use this monstrosity when it first appeared. I was on it for two days. I pulled the slopware off my system, told Twitter to get lost (in exactly those words) and have never looked back. It did take them six months and two more e-mails to get them to drive a stake thru the account so it would stop cluttering up my mailbox with spam. Some would argue that there's good information on twitter. Maybe. Nothing I can't find elsewhere if I feel like looking, and that's the point. We are becoming a society that gauges personal worth and self-image by the technology we use, and the "gadget du jour." Does not being able to afford an iPod, or a dislike for "social networking" make you a second (or a no class) citizen? That's the debate we ought to be engaged in.

[DennyCrane]

I'm not surprised the mainstream journalists are embracing Twitter. They make a living thinking that what they have to say is worth listening to. Twitter is just a continuation of that. But I do agree with a previous poster. Facebook/T­witter/Blo­gger all encourage self-centeredness. People love to believe that what they have to say is worth reading and they love to know that others are interested in their lives. We really have become a nation of narcissists.

[Jim Pivonka - Huffpost Blogger]

A nibble of this goes a long way:

"Potentially valuable linkbacks are increasingly shared in micro communities and social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed and they are detouring attention and time away from formal blog responses.

"As the social Web and new services continue the migration and permeation into everything we do online, attention is not scalable. Many refer to this dilemma as attention scarcity or continuous partial attention (CPA) - an increasingly thinning state of focus. It's affecting how and what we consume, when, and more importantly, how we react, participate and share. That something is forever vying for our attention and relentlessly pushing us to do more with less driven by the omnipresent fear of potentially missing what's next.

"We are learning to publish and react to content in ?Twitter time? and I'd argue that many of us are spending less time blogging, commenting directly on blogs, or writing blogs in response to blog sources because of our active participation in micro communities.

"With the popularity and pervasiveness of microblogging (a.k.a. micromedia) and activity streams and timelines, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and the like are competing for your attention and building a community around the statusphere - the state of publishing, reading, responding to, and sharing micro-sized updates."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/10/AR2009031000706_pf.html

[jmby]

I once had a college professor who, after we all listened to a grad student in our directing class expound ad nauseum for the -inth time about her "art" and her "artist's vision", turn to the class and say, "The thing you must always ask yourself before speaking is this: "Is what I have to say worth making others listen to?"

Touche. Twenty years later, I still keep that piece of advice close. The Facebook/T­witter/Blo­g culture could benefit from it. Who cares that you've spent an hour watching your cat watch the front yard? Or that a Congressman is sitting next to John McCain at Obama's first speech to the Congress? Or that your status has been updated to "bored"? For that matter, why does someone in the checkout line at Target find it necessary to TELL someone else on their cellphone that they're in line at Target?

Sting once said that everyone in America imagines themselves on television or in a movie all the time. I sneered at that comment then, but, sadly, have come to believe it. America has become a nation of self-important, self-aggrandizing, self-absorbed babies who have just discovered their toes and must tell everyone about it immediately.

[EyeDoc007]

It's the United States of Entertainment.

[VoteforPedro]

The Twitter fad will be dead by July 4th.

Bookmark this.

[whybaby]

It can't come soon enough! But what ADD-exacerbatting, flavor-of-the-month techno-thing will take its place?

[pcpatterson]

Isn't this just an extension of the "blog"? Are there really over 100 million people in America with interesting things to say?

Read a book. Get a life.

[jakesinger]

We are entering the New Dark Ages. Twittering about your lunch or reading about some celebrity's dinner is about as evolved as a caveman saying, "Me eat animal." We're letting go of our amazing gift for thinking deeply, seeing complexity, and someday we'll miss it -- we'll simply say, "Me feel empty."

[DennyCrane]

Thank you for this article. Twitter really does feel like it's meant for people with ADD. It's bad enough we have a media that talks in soundbites. Now we have a populace that does it too. And it only encourages the narcissism that Facebook started. Now, instead of collecting friends, we collect followers.

[jonlester]

I resisted Facebook until just last week. I'm convinced I can use it responsibly and sparingly and get good benefit from it, but I have no plans to explore the Twitter lifestyle. I have a 2001-vintage cell phone anyway.