By K. A. Laity
140 characters isn't much. But Twitter is a different information delivery system from the generally static format of the website or the more thoughtful missives of a blog. It's also more focused than the Facebook web of convergences. Tweets can come like a single shot or a spray of bullets. Even mainstream media has discovered it, so what are you waiting for?
You get used to the conventions quickly, like the sight of the Fail Whale. The backbone of the system rests on 'following' people, which seems inherently unequal. But people who have more followers than they themselves follow are generally considered snobs. Inevitably, however, most of the people who follow you are marketing scum—why would you follow them? The sad truth is at first you want to gather followers any way you can. There's nothing sadder than a zero in the followers column.
Following people can bring you the impression of having a closer relationship with them. This can be bad when you follow celebrities. I used to think that @neilhimself had stolen my career: now I know it's really Stephen Fry who purloined the life I wish I had.
I thought I envied Fry before, but now that I get his tweets from across the world, often linked to pictures of the fabulous things he's doing, I feel even more like a boring failure who should probably drown her disappointments in a lot of chocolate sauce—except Fry's probably already doing that, too.
Fictional people can be more fun than real people, but they have a shorter life span. I adore getting a tweet about the doings at the parochial house from @Mrs_Doyle, or the directive "Hum along in pants" from @lordmcjenkins, but both have fallen quiet of late. Thousands follow @god (but more follow Stephen Fry—hmmm, what does that tell us?).
Live commentary can be brilliant: we've seen tweets from plane crashes, the horrors in the hotel in Mumbai, or as a way of keeping track of people in living in police states. It's also practical for chipping away at a writing assignment. How did @charltonbrooker ever finish his columns without kibbutzing on Twitter first? The beauty is that lack of effort the short text box gives you. Friends who can't be bothered to blog or email will dash off a tweet without thinking about it.
140 characters can be entirely too much for some people. Brevity is the soul of wit, yet enforced brevity does not very often lead to its production. It can be painful to realise that even restricted to 140 characters, some folks's thoughts seem interminable. It's kind of pathetic when you can't finish reading someone's tweet.
To help you avoid that, here's what seems to work best on Twitter:
Bon mots
It's that whole brevity=soul of wit again. 140 characters is perfect for a polished sentence or scathing quip. Oblique Strategies fall into this category as well. The knock-on-the-head creativity cards (i.e. tarot cards for the logical minded) invented by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt are available via Twitter, too: @Oblique_Chirps (but @brianeno is not Brian Eno). Some even come from beyond the veil.
Surrealism
It's best in small doses anyway. Whether it's one of @warrenellis' vitriolic outbursts or @lordmcjenkins' faux old timey pronouncements, they go down as tastily as a chocolate-covered eyeball.
Group activities
Who would have imagined that the wretched failure, The Happening, could generate so much joy? When @Glinner spearheaded a showing of it as part of #badmovieclub, people orgasmed together in a wallow of badness. A second showing with @jupitusphillip seemed equally well attended. It's not quite as chaotic as a chat room and you don't have to hear everybody. Back in December I had great fun with @twitpanto who did Cinderella. It was brilliant fun.
Venting
The swiftly scrolling nature of all the tweets makes it slightly more suitable than a Facebook status for a quick plosive burst of venom. I know I benefit from this as few of my colleagues and students follow Twitter (so far) and carping about either group is less likely to ruffle feathers there. The ephemeral nature of it makes your spew feel less harmful (and you can always delete a tweet), and we always need more ways to release stress. Make like a little birdie and tweet.
[Image via SF Weekly]