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Twitter?

Twitter is, well, silly.

I am @MsMirabileDictu.  I don’t know why I am @.

I feel like Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones:  Mad About the Boy.

9:45 p.m.  Have got onto Twitter site but do not understand.  Is just incomprehensible streams of gibberish half-conversations with @this and @that.  How is anybody supposed to know what is going on?

I also like:

9:15 p.m.  Cannot figure out how to put up photo.  Is just empty egg-shaped graphic.  Is fine!  Can be photo of self before was conceived.

Spambots follow her, unfollow her, people she knows follow her, unfollow her, strangers follow her, unfollow her, and it is all very, very funny.

Twitter?  What’s it for?

I use it to “follow” (is that another word for “stalk”?) book review publications, writers, bloggers, and a couple of critics.  When the Washington Post posts a new book review–click!  I’m there.

Heavens, I was there every day before I went on Twitter.  The Wash Post and other review publications can confirm that by cookies.

So much for stalking!

I know very few people in “real life” who are on Twitter.  My role model cousin, who tells me about Amish general stores without electricity and CSA (Community Supported Agriculture, where one can order vegetables directly from farmers), thinks Twitter is hugely time-wasting.  She is on Facebook.

I don’t actually know what Facebook is for, either.

I prefer Yahoo Groups, though some of those have become moribund.

And I have already looked at the blogs on my blogroll and discovered that only a couple of you are on Twitter (or at least you don’t list it if you are).

So why or why not are you on Twitter?

11 thoughts on “Twitter?”

  1. I’m really there to “follow” my daughters, because both put, however short these are, messages which reflect what they are doing or feeling over the day. And other people their age do this. And a few other people who are friends and occasionally tweet — these mostly like me announce blogs.

    For Amanda Vickery (great 18th century scholar) who”retweets” what she reads on the Net, some of it very interesting. For Katha Pollit — ditto political columns she reads.

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  3. Ellen, yes, I am a blog announcer now! I follow Vickery and will follow Katha Pollitt now.

    Rhonda, you’re having more fun than I am, though I must admit one blogger is so witty that I burst out laughing at his tweets. I am going to follow you now.

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  4. I think Twitter is a bit daft because not only can’t you say much on it, you then end up spending hours on it saying daft things and waiting for other people to say daft things back! Me, I’d rather read a book!

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  5. Karen, you’re so funny! Most of the tweets I get are announcements, but the daft and funny ones would certainly take time for me.

    Off to go check Twitter!

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  6. I’m not on Twitter anymore. I never was a big fan; it always seemed to be about people who thought they were very clever but weren’t. Facebook is all about my far Right-Wing Tea Party cousins so I don’t go there either.

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  7. I spend so much time on my blog that I don’t have much time for other social media, if indeed we bloggers are writing social media (are we?). No, I’d avoid the Tea Party cousins, too.

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  8. I use Twitter to follow magazines that publish “longreads” and I use it also to learn fast about something. I find people who do what I want to learn and follow them for a while. Normally they post interesting links, tutorials and such. After I have what I need I unfollow them. I don’t follow more than 25 people at a time. It’s better than spending hours on Google. Not on FB.

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  10. It’s a matter of building up a list so that you’re following enough people that interest and inform you so that you can pop in whenever you need a quick fix of metablogging. It used to have a back channel feel to blogging itself, but that’s gone by the wayside.

    I’ve been trying out Facebook a little more the last few months, but it’s my least favorite of all the social media. Most of my friends have better sense than to go near it, so, before I blocked him, I wind up dealing with a Tea Party former high school classmate personally attacking me and bombarding my page with links from Glenn Beck’s site because I was commie pinko enough to say I shook Joe Biden’s hand on my birthday one year.

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  11. Susan, I know there’s a good way to use it: these are good suggestions.

    How awful about the Tea Party guy! We like Joe Biden at our house, too, so good for you!

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