This finally proves that we are dealing with a legitimate form of media
by schwim on Apr.19, 2009, under Miscellaneous
There was a time when I thought that Twitter was one of the most insipid societal fads to come down the pipeline in my lifetime. Then CNN set me straight. It’s not insipid. It’s main stream. It’s cool. We know this because Ashton Kutcher, Puff Daddy and Oprah say so.
You see, Ashton and CNN were in a heated race to be the first to have 1 million subscribers to their Twitter channel. You may think that it was done in good humour, but no, this was serious business. I’m going to share some quotes from the superstar, Ashton himself. Wondering if these came from his twits? Don’t be silly. You have no room for complete sentences, much less fully formed thoughts that make sense. No sir, he went on “Larry King Live” to talk about this “battle”. He wanted to explain why this “duel” had to happen.
“At the end of the day, we all have ego, we all have some level of ego, but if we can use our ego to actually create good charitable things in the world in some way, and use our ego — originally, I defined Twitter as an ego stream when I first saw it. But then what I realized is if we can transform that into something that’s positive that can actually effectively change the world, that can be a really valuable tool.”
That’s one hell of a sentence, there Ashton.
There are also some quotable quotes from Oprah Winfrey and Sean P-Diddy “Puff Daddy” Combs. It’s hard for me to allow the type of content to make it to my clipboard, but I will say that Puff said “bling bling” and Oprah thanked her loyal followers for supporting her during this brave new world of twits. Of note is the fact that Oprah had over 73,000 followers on Twitter before actually twitting anything. You guys get that? almost 75 thousand people joined her channel before she did. This proves Ashton’s point that although he’s a celebrity, we’re all the same really. For instance, were I to create a Twitter account, there is a good chance that 75,000 people would sign up to hear about my latest bowel movement before I got a chance to actually write anything.
Oh, and Puff daddy wants you to know that he has substance. If a 140 character restriction suited anyone, it would be him.
UPDATE:
CNN congratulates Ashton and includes the following in their kudos:
Now more than ever, the consumer is in the driver’s seat and we couldn’t be more gratified than to be part of this historic social media milestone.
If that truly is the case, the consumer is more of a fucktard than I originally assumed.
That’s saying a lot.
April 19th, 2009 on 4:22 am
Just maybe, the guys that invented Twitter so named it because they thought it would only attract twits. If so, then I think they’ve been proven correct.
One day they’ll pop up and say “Ha! Fooled you. This was just a social experiment to see how vacuous some people would allow themselves to become”.
I have a hard enough time writing a blog entry that I think is worth the while of anyone reading. There’s no way I’d use Twitter … either as ‘twitter’ or ‘twittee’.
April 19th, 2009 on 10:17 am
It’s supposed to be worthwhile? Shit.
I think it’s much more likely that they’re going to say it was a plot to make so much money that they can wipe their asses with hundreds until they die and never run out.
It’s no different than Youtube. It becomes the next big thing, it gets purchased by a company whose job it is to absorb hip ideas, then it begins taking the obvious path to irrelevance. It’s what happens to fads. Just ask the leisure suit and the iPhone.
April 19th, 2009 on 6:11 pm
No Twitterbug here.
How many iterations of the “social experiment to see how vacuous some people would allow themselves to become” must we perform? I thought we’d resolved that with absolute certainty many years ago.
Indeed, the whole internet itself is becoming less and less interesting as I watch the Powers That Be slowly but inexorably turn it into 2wayTV…… Autobahn downstream, dirt road upstream (just enough to keep the cookies, data mining, viruses and spiders flowing freely)….. complete with speed limits, gas rationing, and fines or jail time if you push the envelope.
Been thinking maybe it’s time to go back to single-sideband or something.
Or maybe rig up a dial-up modem to plug into the power outlet and see if we can start up an old style Bulletin Board service over the electric grid. ANSI graphics anyone?
Or better yet, just throw a signal straight up to bounce off the space junk and be received via satTV dish. Hmmmmm..
Maybe I’m just having a biorythmical bad day. It would have been okay, Schwim, if you’d just left the leisure suit out of it. I thought my yellow one was still way cool and sure to be back in fashion momentarily.