Geezers on Twitter

No Telling
Yep, I finally did it. I’m Twittering. I’m not doing it well, but I’m slinging tweets here and there all the same. This isn’t throw-down, addictive twittering, though, because 1) I still refuse to text and so have limited A-B-C skills with a cell phone, and 2) I can’t answer the “What are you doing?” question with anything interesting. Really, who cares that I graded papers and whined about Daylight Savings Time last night? Nobody.

And most people I know aren’t twittering. None of my friends, anyway, who might actually commiserate on the grading thing. My family’s generational/technological divide makes twittering any of them a complete waste of time. My daughter and all her Gen Y buddies are still living and dying on Facebook, and my parents (bless their hearts) still call to tell me they’ve sent an email. Maybe my sister – in all her Gen X splendor – is a twitterer. I’ll send her an email today to find out, because that’s how we Gen Jonesers roll. I do all my twittering on a laptop anyway.

My colleagues? Forget about it. There’s no way a whole department of writing professors can can keep it to 140 characters. Ever.

Other folks leave fascinating tweets and I’m following a few of them. Some leave must-read links and information randomly throughout the day, but there have been a few addicts who, while they initially seemed interesting, have turned out to be even more dull than I am. It’s a mystery to me why someone with a thousand “followers” thinks we care what kind of coffee they just bought or what time they plan to call it a night. Life’s too short to waste it reading inane shit like that.

I suspect I just haven’t found my Twitter-Voice yet. I’ll get to work on that and tell you how it goes, although you could probably follow me on Twitter and find out for yourself. I don’t recommend it, really. Until I figure out my basic rhetorical strategy, it’s pointless anyway.