Written Pyramids

I don't actually use Twitter. I had an empty account that I set up back in 2007 when I was writing an article about presidential candidates using new-ish technology. (Guess which one was using Twitter? Fred Thompson! He actually has gotten better at it since the campaign, when his account was just a list of events he was attending). My account was never used, used a pseudonymous handle, and had hundreds of spam followers. I closed it years later when I remembered that it existed at all. I now have another one under my real name, which is private and empty while I figure out what actually do it with it.

My confusion about Twitter is, in some ways, like my confusion about the iPad. I understand what to do with it and how to do it, but I don't understand the point. But for Twitter the problem is also related to my work's pretty strict policy about social media that can be traced back to the publication. So, while my Gchat status messages are often witty (or so I'm told), I'm not keen to broadcast them into the ether of the Internet on a site where I would need to follow professional contacts as well as friends. So for now, I'm solely a consumer of tweets.

Which brings me to my real problem with Twitter: I sound like an idiot when I talk about it. The other day, I was complaining to a friend about a tweet that had offered misleading information.  I stopped my self half way through the sentence, because using the words "tweeted" "hashtag" and "handle" and "tweet" in one sentence makes me sound like I am using some middle school code, not talking about actual media that is being archived by the Library of Congress.

And by the way, the vocabulary for Facebook is not much better. Come to think of it,  the verb "to blog" is stupid-sounding too.

So, yes, I am all for Slate's campaign to develop a new vocabulary  even though I suspect it's too late to change very much. (Also, I plan on never using phrases like twitterverse or tweeple. Yeesh).

Image from the Twitter Status Generator.