The cartoonist and the twits
July 17, 2012 in Comment, General
Our man Bill Stott reports:
Well, I tried. Caved in to peer pressure and signed up to Twitter. Did the same with Facebook years ago. Finally managed to un-Facebook myself a while back. At least, I think I did. You can never tell with these things. Joining’s easy. Leaving’s a lot more complicated. A bit like marriage.
So I’m not about to find out how to LEAVE Twitter. I’m just not going to tweet and watch it wither on the vine. Better still, I’m not even going to watch it. Yes, yes, I know that this might be dangerous and that when the revolution explodes I’ll be the only one in our street wondering whose tanks are rolling across next door’s lawn and why my hair is on fire.
No Facebook? No Twitter? How can this be? Am I a monk of austere order? Am I a berk with nothing to say? No, and most of the latter appear to be on Facebook or Twitter anyway. And austere monks? I have no idea what they do with their thumbs.
Let me explain: I have a mobile phone, a humble little grey thing – almost a collector’s item now. Only three people know my number. Why have I got it? It’s in case my car breaks down or some other emergency. What it’s NOT for is “chat”. I do not check it every five minutes to see if anybody’s tried to tell me something underwhelming. I do not feel the need to blunder through shopping malls, head down, thumbs blurring, texting somebody about being in a shopping mall.
And so it was with Twitter. I did actually tweet three or four times. Admittedly, the first one was to say that I thought Twitter was crap and what a pain it was going to be – checking to see if anybody had tweeted back. They didn’t. People like me are beyond the social-network pale. We (I really hope there are others out there) hate the idea of being instantly accessible. We are irritated by tweeters who call themselves “Red Necco” or “Juli”. Its JulIE, OK? Not Judi, or Nikki, or Debbi. And its “gossip”, not “goss”, right?
Come the day my PC can accurately classify incoming tweets as Important, Moderately Important, Mildly Interesting or Vapid, I might take part again (the world will be relieved to know). Until then I shall remain mildly interested in the extreme level of banality achieved in 140 characters.
I like emails. They’re like writing letters. Remember them? When you had to actually WRITE? When you used at least three digits to hold the pen, and a whole handful more to keep the paper from sliding about? OK, my emailing’s of the one finger variety, but I’m not limited to the silly 140-character tweet rule. I can rant on and on, despite knowing full well that the recipient will immediately identify the sender, think, “Oh, its him!” and press “DELETE”
Tea and sympathy or well-meaning advice can be offered to Bill here. You can follow the rest of us, should you be so minded, here.
colinwhittock said on July 17, 2012
I’m with you, Bill, well I’m not with you ‘cos I’m Tweetless, I’d also be Facebookless if I could have stopped the kids joining me up.
I don’t think I’m missing a great deal. Am I ?
Andy Davey said on July 17, 2012
Excellent, Bill. The little “1” next to the Tweet sign above suggests that somebody has tweeted about this already. How post-modern.
Guy Venables said on July 17, 2012
LMAO, LOL gr8.#
Matthew Buck said on July 18, 2012
Spot on Mr Venables
Royston said on July 18, 2012
And there was me, checking in at http://twitter.com/billstott1 on a daily basis for updates. I feel cheated. Great piece, Bill. I think you should chop it into 140-character chunks and tweet it.
Bill Stott said on July 20, 2012
What’s LMAO Guy ? Lubricate My Aunt’s Oldsmobile ?
Matthew Buck said on July 23, 2012
Bill – That’s laughing my arse off. Or, ass if you are a colonial