I established a Twitter account recently and haven’t posted a single tweet. Why? Because I don’t think my random thoughts are of interest to anyone, especially those thoughts that can fit into Twitter’s 140-character limit.
And I truly don’t understand people who think their 140-character random thoughts should be of interest to others, even if—as apparently is the case with Ashton Kutcher—they are.
Twitter’s payoff simply seems too low and its risks too high.
For one thing, I’d be afraid that one night I’d post to Twitter after a few cocktails. I’d also be afraid people would find my posts interesting for all the wrong reasons, or worst of all, that people would find them boring.
In any case, we have entered an age of communicating first and thinking later.
And there is a serious downside to all this kneejerk communicating even beyond the obvious mountains of crap we must wade through to get at anything worthwhile.
For example, I was horrified when I read of Sara Williams, the wife of Twitter CEO Evan Williams, typing posts while giving birth.
“She can’t possibly have given any thought to what can go wrong,” I thought, remembering my own son’s birth six-plus years ago.
The day Max was born, everything seemed to be fine. But later when we were in my wife’s hospital room fawning over our new baby boy, a doctor we didn’t know walked in—a neurosurgeon, we were about to find out.
The doctor pointed out something we hadn’t noticed. Max’s arm was rhythmically ticking back and forth. He was having seizures.
What did it mean? The doctor didn’t know. We would have to get a CAT scan done on the boy’s brain.
During the scan, the technician could tell us nothing. But we could see by a large black irregular stain on the viewing screen that something had gone terribly wrong.
Sure enough, Max had had a massive brain hemorrhage. What did this mean? Again, the doctor didn’t know. He couldn’t say anything beyond: “He could be fine; he could be severely disabled; only time will tell.”
For the record, Max is fine, happy, smart, active boy. His brain somehow rewired itself around the hole the hemorrhage left behind. It’s like nothing ever happened.
We were lucky.
But imagine if I or my wife had been posting on Twitter during that episode:
“Uh, oh. Doctor just told us Max is having seizures. Must go get a CAT scan.”
“Getting the scan now. There is a massive black stain on the back of his brain. They won’t tell us what it means.”
“They’re taking Max away. Still have no information. Jesus. What is going to happen now? Worst day of our lives.”
So yeah, I think it’s best I leave my Twitter account dormant. And maybe others should think about doing so, as well.
