The Trouble with Twitter: Why "Tweets" Are Like "Blipverts"

Max Headroom begins to learn the horror of the "blipvert."

I love technology. I've been a BlackBerry person since 2002, a Mac person since the '80s. Back in the early '90s, when I was new to the Internet, I once spent 26 hours straight on it. Never did find the end. I've blogged while walking down the street talking to a candidate. I use a wireless network of laptops, with one or more frequently playing an international news channel.

But early adoption can go down wrong paths. I spent weeks trying to teach a Newton handheld to read my handwriting. The $5,000 I spent for the souped-up version of the PowerBook that saved the planet in Independence Day was not the wisest investment, though mine never caught fire. And there was ISDN, an early high-speed Internet connection. Uh, no, give me back my dial-up!

Which brings us to Twitter. I get news alerts and sitreps, e-mails, memos, and press releases, day and night. I write at any hour. But do I want tiny "tweets," bitelets of what is arguably information, frequently trivial and not infrequently wrong, demanding my attention at any moment? Do I want to send such stuff out?

"Why, don't you know? They're twitterpated."

We live in the midst of a media cacophony.

It's a time marked by inundation, fragmentation, and an ADD culture.

Twitter drives all three of those trends.

For those who haven't checked it out, Twitter is a little like text messaging, very brief, near instant messages faster than e-mail. I got into that years ago, after some resistance, at the behest of girlfriends. It's fun, within the context of a back-and-forth. Though it can certainly go on and on.

But aside from the extreme brevity, Twitter is not like that. Except for the on and on part.

At 140 characters per message, tweets are even shorter than texts. And they lack the context.

And if there is one thing our media culture has already been lacking, it's context. Spend too much time watching American cable news, where you can literally see faddish and frequently groundless political views become a faux consensus in a matter of hours as folks rather hysterically talk themselves into a viewpoint that is totally at odds with political reality outside the echo chamber, and that's already clear.

Then add something like Twitter, and the hysteria can reach a fever pitch, with commentators, conventional and unconventional alike, tweeting feverishly away into the ether, hoping their info-bleeps capture a moment's attention.

At an emotional moment which he wishes to tweet to his followers, Hitler is incensed to learn that Twitter is down again.

One part of the problem, of course, is that the format is simply too short. I value the blizzard of information I'm signed up for, distracting and tiring as it can be, because it comes in usually intelligible form. Which is to say, at least a paragraph.

Perhaps when the technology that follows after Twitter allows more space for explanation of what the frak it is one is so frantically trying to say, it will be truly useful.

Kind of like what followed a few years after the Newton. But in the meantime, the personal digital assistant concept was discredited.

Another part of the problem is what, for lack of a better phrase, I'll call the inane factor.

Facebook is something I'm on but have mostly ignored til lately, mainly because of how busy the campaign season was. But it's intriguing, because of its rich media environment and the ability to link at one's own pace. When I started checking it out more, a friend warned: "Get ready for the inanity."

A Facebook status update is like a tweet. Except you can actually say more on Facebook. As it happens, much of what people choose to say -- about their plane flights, their desires for dinner, and so on -- is less than fascinating.

But on Facebook, at least, one can scroll right past a status update, or never even look at it.

Tweets are more demanding of attention.

And if someone I'm not in a pretty close relationship with -- or am at least having a conversation with -- demands to tell me about their desire for a baked potato and a viewing of The Singing Nun, I'm not too happy.

Max Headroom with a modified blipvert for slower minds. Meant to be consumers, so best spared mortal danger. For Coke.

All this reminds me of the old Max Headroom TV series from the 1980s.

Because the media culture in the Max Headroom universe of Britain and America was waterlogged with a cacophony of messages, the ad mavens created the "blipvert." A 5-second condensed TV ad so compelling and so swift that the viewer had no opportunity to switch to another channel with the remote control.

But they had one extremely unfortunate side effect.

Blipverts caused the nervous systems of "particularly lazy, petulant viewers," as an ad maven called them, to overload and their heads to explode.

Overlay the current version of Twitter on top of our increasingly hysterical media cacophony, and there we are. Metaphorically speaking, naturally ...

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

Comments

[bselvin]

I find Twitter useful. I use it to follow what people in my field are reading and talking about. I don't look at it every day, but when I do spend time on it, I always find interesting links or a bit of news I hadn't heard. I'm selective about whom I follow -- very few friends -- and I post only occasionally.

[soultravelers3]

Well written, but totally clueless! The writer and all the comments are all by people who have not spent enough time on Twitter to figure it out.

You need to watch and listen to some of the masters on Twitter who are getting and giving tremendous value out of it like @guykawasaki @chrisbrogan, @pistachio @lizstauss @elliottng etc . John A. Byrne, editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com is one of my favorites.

It takes a little while to figure Twitter out and EVERYBODY thinks it is stupid at first.

Unlike you, I am not geeky at all, but I have been on Twitter for over a year and it has been an astounding tool on our open ended world tour as a family. I wrote about it here: http://www.soultravelers3.com/2009/02/twitter-travel-20.html

I am also up for Lonely Planet Travel Awards for Best Microblog due to my Twitter account ( along with nominations for Best Video and Best Themed). We are the only ones nominated for 3 awards. I get 24% of my traffic from Twitter and have almost 6000 followers there.

"Who" and "How Many" people you follow or follow you on Twitter, makes a HUGE difference in one's Twitter experience.

Funny, but I tweeted about how clueless this post was in a discussion on Twitter with another writer and the head researcher from National Geographic retweeted it! Twitter helps in making it a small world today!

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

There's no question that Twitter is perfect for the deeply self-absorbed ...

[tdao]

hahahaha.

[SILSM]

It has certainly grown way past the original intention of "keeping in touch with your families and friends." Words still on Twitter homepage. Bet the founders are not complaining while laughing all the way to the VCs' vaults. I had signed up to receive news/media alerts, yes, Huffington Post, etc. Soon it became too overwhelming. I am employeed (one of the few fortunate) and I cannot afford to be clicking on every single SHORTENED URLs sent my way. I will go back to my RSS feeds and Google news alert, thank you very much. Then I figured out that this is a FREE way to broadcast my Blog to whoever is watching the "timeline". Hey 0.1% of millions is plenty for me! (Not working very well if you must know. Well, you knew). Soon I discovered TWITTER CELEBS. And the door suddenly opened wide and I heard celestial music streaming through the glass window where I could peek into what these people DO throughout the DAY! It somehow seems more relevant when they say, "I drank a cup of coffee" than when my son said, "Mom, look! I drew a picture for you!" Narcissism + voyeurism at its most naked form. I confess. I got carried away by the belief that if my voice is somehow in the same vaccum as these Celebs', I would somehow be relevant too. Kind embarrassing since I actually have a doctoral degree in Performance Studies. THIS is what dissertations are made of...

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

This is part of the problem. We inundate ourselves with information. To the extent that it's very fragmentary and at times totally self-indulgent it's like a diet of popcorn.

[tdao]

Having just created a twitter account a few months ago, I find twitter not as engaging as facebook. The information people (myself included) choose to post are mostly unimportant nonsense. With just a tiny icon to show the users profile and a 140 characters to fill out, one doesn't get enough information when they view a profile. Facebook on the other hand provides juicy relationship status, wall conversations, countless pictures of the user, notes, bio, groups, events.. etc, all that and a status update (the same as a tweet). One positive that twitter has over facebook is instantaneousness that it provides users who have twitter connected to their phones. However, since many are starting to connect facebook to their mobile devices, and since I myself can't use that feature anyways (only have limited txts per month), I find myself abandoning my twitter account without feeling anything missing inside.

[BottomLine2008]

Twitter is noise.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

The technological limits of Twitter sentence it to shallowness.

[SlappHappy]

I'll be concise: Twitter sux. Tweet tweet!

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

That's concise, all right.

[Fleurdamour]

You are painting this useful new tool with too broad a brush. Like anything, Twitter can be misused. It's not supposed to take the place of extended discourse. It's for short announcements, like posting a link you think friends/colleagues would like, or telling a joke, or just checking in with people. I don't have time to chat with friends all day, or to write long emails or illuminated handwritten letters with a quill pen to be delivered by trained birds. With Twitter, I can post a brief comment and have a little social contact while I am working on other things. It's just another mode of expression for me, not the main one, but a fun one. Try reading the Brit actor Stephen Fry's Tweets. Hilarious, and a perfect example of how to use Twitter.

[BottomLine2008]

You haven't followed how it's actually being used, have you?

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

A great many things are "misused" as a matter of their common usage.

[BottomLine2008]

Tell me about it.

[Clavis]

I believe the word was "perpetual", not "petulant", as in "Particularly slothful perpetual viewers". (I was really into the show.)

Great reference, great essay.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks!

You may be right about the quote. I always remembered the line as "petulant," perhaps because it's a bit more nastily amusing ... :)

[Heidfeld]

This stuff makes me crazy. It is like the polar opposite of content in the New Yorker, which is generally lenghty and well writen... and, to me, quite enjoyable.

I fear for the future.

Oh, and anyone causing an accident due to cell phone use (talking or driving) should face MANDATORY prison time, no matter how minor the accident. It is the only way to get through to these morons.

[BottomLine2008]

Wow, you are comparing two super extremes, there.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Hopefully we can find a happy medium between the lovely but discursive New Yorker style and the "tweet" ...

[DennyCrane]

Thank you for this article. I refuse to use Twitter cause I see at just another part of our ADD culture. Defenders of Twitter will say the 140 character limit forces you to be concise. But too often, more than 140 characters are called for. Twitter encourages people to speak in soundbites. It's bad enough our media does this rather than truly delving into a story, but now we have a population that does it as well.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

You're welcome.

I can be concise in the "status update" manner. But it doesn't get us much of anywhere ...

[WStadtlander]

I'm a fairly new Twitter user. I was pretty cynical about the idea at first, but now that I'm using it I've had a change of heart. While not useful by any means, Twitter can be entertaining if used properly. I follow only a few friends, so its like an 8-way conversation with people scattered across the country, and no one gets the floor for too long. In this age, there are diversions less worthy, less enriching than the *mostly* pointless Twitter.
That being said, it has absolutely no business being anywhere near a news network. I blame the media for trying to incorporate a youth cultural fad into TV news. Its misappropriation of the technology, and serves only to obscure the value of the technology, pushes mainstream media somehow farther out of touch with reality.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks, that's much of my point.

>That being said, it has absolutely no business being anywhere near a news network. I blame the media for trying to incorporate a youth cultural fad into TV news. Its misappropriation of the technology, and serves only to obscure the value of the technology, pushes mainstream media somehow farther out of touch with reality.

[ppitstop]

Oh, and love the ref to Max Headroom. That was dry comedy ahead of its time, and apparently prophetic too!

[ppitstop]

You stole MY one-word description of Twitter - "inane" indeed. I slap it on my opinion of Facebook too. And ADD - well, let's put it this way, my sister, who has always had a moderate case of ADD, is addicted to texting and now Twitter-ing. It is annoying at the least, and I fear for her current and future productivity as a member of our society at the most. I flat out fear for people driving on the same road as her, for fear she cannot resist her iPhone whiile behind the wheel. So thanks, twits who created Twitter, for absolutely no good reason whatsoever. Texting is bad enough.

[BottomLine2008]

Facebook is pretty silly, too.

It's all narcissism.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

I am very concerned about how all these things are affecting the culture and the people in it, fracturing concentration even in people who do not have ADD.

[BottomLine2008]

"Inane in the membrane."

[NelsonC]

Damn.
I thought I was the only one who remembers blipverts, and the surprisingly good (and way ahead of it's time) Max Headroom tv series.

[therblig]

"Asking is just polite d-d-demanding"

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

I was reminded of Max Headroom last year covering the Romney campaign ...

>That being said, it has absolutely no business being anywhere near a news network. I blame the media for trying to incorporate a youth cultural fad into TV news. Its misappropriation of the technology, and serves only to obscure the value of the technology, pushes mainstream media somehow farther out of touch with reality.

[BottomLine2008]

Now, Max Headroom in the Coke ad is like a hyped up version of a commercial pitch man but sarcastic.

I wonder how well those ads did.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

They did very well in Australia and Britain, less well in the US, where consumers didn't like having their noses rubbed in their own manipulation.

[BottomLine2008]

I'll bet.

[BottomLine2008]

What would we do without the life lessons of Bambi?

"Twitterpa­ted."

[RoseMerry]

Amen to that! That clip is one of my favorites. And it is not interesting that the original Bambi is a BOY?

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

I hadn't thought of that ...

[karinova]

Er?
Is Bambi a girl now?