Thursday, August 6, 2009

Twitterly We Roll Along

Twitter certainly is an odd little bug, isn't it?

You can follow some arbitrary threads of people's lives, people that you've never met, probably will never meet, and may be in drastically different stations of life than yourself. One of my new hobbies is following people's tweet-threads (tweads? sigh...) and watching their collective discussions unravel and re-connect with other people in their lives, online and off. Do you all remember party lines? How some communities had shared phone lines, and you could pick up the phone and listen to your neighbors chatting, if you picked up the receiver quietly and didn't giggle?

It's like that.

For example, an average celebrity twead chase (following one tweet to a thread to a follower's tweets etc etc):

Amanda Palmer makes kissy-face tweets with her boyfriend Neil Gaiman >> Adam Savage from Mythbusters tweets about hanging out with Penn Jillette at TAM7 >> Trent Reznor complains about scary women who now chase him in his middle age >> Weird Al twitpics Seth Green riding a segway in Al's front room, and then asks his wife where left his shoes, who reminds Al that he left them by the hammock where he napped that morning >> Clive Barker and Peter Straub try to out-story each other with (supposedly...probably) true tales of back-room shows in Amsterdam and Mexican girlie bars...

And so on. Bizarre. Not sure how much longer it can hold my interest, but it certainly is a new thing. Takes the fucking varnish right off of celebrities, which lies in stark contrast to how famous people were "supposed" to behave when I was young. I prefer this way--more natural. They seem human. Celebrity is a weird, artificial shell anyway.

Also, I've seen Clive Barker tweet-up Felicity Dowker a few times, which is very cool.
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Here in about ten minutes, the wife and kids are off to visit family on Montana for a week or so, and I (and my Malamute) have the house all to ourselves. I'm taking a few days off next week, and my plan, among other things, is to pretend to be a Professional Writer. Which means, I suppose, writing for the majority of the work day, instead of doing the DayJob™ all day and writing at night. It will be a fun little fiction...see what It would be like, if It paid enough to do It full time.
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And now, the new Zombieland Trailer (NSFW, zombie bewbs and all that).


7 comments:

Aaron Polson said...

Yeah...I'm one of those in the "not so sure about Twitter" camp. Our culture burns through thing pretty fast...I use my students as the gauge. Five years ago it was Xanga. Then MySpace. Then Facebook (which is, truthfully, still going strong). They flip up their noses at MySpace now. Xanga? What's Xanga?

We'll see what's next.

Jeremy D Brooks said...

I'm still not totally sure about Twitter either. I don't really post, I just stalk, and I know that will get old soon. But I do see the value in it; but you really have to be an outgoing person to get it to work, I think.

Fox Lee said...

I always feel a little weird when I visit the down-to-earth celebrity blog. Its like I'm peeking at them getting undressed.

Actually with Kishidan, its exactly like that. ; )

Jamie Eyberg said...

I like it when people post blogs and articles on Twitter. things I would never find on my own.

Katey said...

I'm vaguely weirded out by people who conduct their very personal relationships via an open twitter feed-- but other than that I think it's all right. Particularly seeing other writers dealing with the same crap I'm used to dealing with at my desk alone all day. Misery loves some company, right?

Cate Gardner said...

My name is Cate and I'm addicted to twitter... :D

Felicity Dowker said...

Twitter was made worthwhile for me the first time Clive Barker spoke to me through it. :op