Twitter Bugs Me! By Timm Carney

I don't know why but it does. I've read a few 'Tweets' (what a dreadfully stupid word) and I have not been interested or impressed at all. Most of it reminded me of Speed Freak babble. If this is the state of our language, I fear the end is near. Recently a friend, who will remain unnamed to protect her identity and face, forwarded me a bunch of Courtney Love's recent blather. Granted, it's Courtney Love one doesn't expect Wolfe, Stein or even Helen Gurley Brown for Christ's sake but this crap was utter bullshit. Who fucking cares you're selling your fucking shoes! If this is all that's going on in your head, I, Courtney Love, pity you. Okay to give the broad some credit I have only read about a day's worth of her 'tweets' but in that time I was bored senseless. Perhaps she does write pithy, pertinent and cognizant thoughts, but I saw no evidence of it.

Have we become a 'LOL' culture? If so, I want no part of it. What happened to thinking and speaking and writing? Did Ginsberg and Burroughs live for naught? I don't expect everyone to write and speak as an English major, but come on, full sentences never hurt anybody. If one wants to write in abstract thoughts in an abstract manner, one must put a modicum of thought into the abstraction. Cast your pearls unto the swine not vice versa.

Twitter could be a new art form, a new and exciting form of communication. I'm no Luddite but I don't think that the utter knowledge of the language and its fundamentals need be scraped. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe our 'new society' needs to create a totally new language and maybe we will only 'tweet' in the future. Maybe David Byrne was right when he said, "In the future TV will be so good that the printed word will function as an artform only." Perhaps thought now functions as an art form only.

I hate to think that intellectual thought and basic English has been lost. If it has, I mourn its loss. I don't blame Courtney for this; I only use her as an example. Perhaps she is just a parrot of society and I and many others could learn a lesson from her. But haven't we always been able to glean parables from Courtney Love's life. The moral of this could be: You too could write and think so vacuously if you don't watch out. You too could be the next Courtney Love.

back to homepage