I am a bit of a geek. I like technology and I like understanding the various uses of that technology. I have spent the last month or so reading every news article I can about a new (I won’t say newest, because as we all know in this industry “newest” is outdated within minutes) phenomenon: Twitter.
I signed up for an account after some prodding from other fellow geeks and went on my way exploring my life 140 characters at a time. What I found out quite quickly is: My life in 140 characters is quite boring. I don’t mean to say I lead a boring life, in fact I argue far from it, but my thoughts and experiences as a whole are not sum-up-able in such arbitrarily small space (I mean even a txt message has 165 characters).
Stephen Fry, the “UK poster boy” for Twitter, tweets non-stop from what airport he is in, to what he had for lunch, to the amazing sunset he sees in Singapore. Now don’t get me wrong I am a huge fan of Stephen Fry. His brilliant comedy and sharp wit is some of the best the UK has to offer. (Watch QI for an excellent display) But I don’t really need to know about every little thing he does, especially since: a) I will never meet him to discuss those thoughts and b) I appreciate him because of his comedy based on his life experiences, not his life experiences themselves.
Then I stumbled across Christopher Walken. How, here is a Twitter-er that actually is funny and only posted when something is necessary. Only one problem: It isn’t Christopher Walken!
This started my brain in motion. This is the Internet, and as is too often the case the hot blonde 19 year old you are hitting on is a fat 45 year old Star Trek fan trying to make it big in the “Dear Penthouse” letter writing business. Nothing on the web is real. This blog isn’t real, it is a series of 1s and 0s cleverly placed to form something we can read. You don’t really have proof that the Stoss you know and love (well…know and put up with) is writing this article. In fact you have no idea where this article is even stored! Truth be told, I am writing it and I have no idea where it is stored. I pay an amount of money to people to let me use a computer and tie that space to a memorable mnemonic. (Fellow geeks will recall the original CompuServ who thought that complex number letter combination would be memorable, yeah, not so much.)
To some extent, aren’t we all a bit thinner, a bit more built, a bit smarter and a bit more popular on the web? Think about your Facebook, do you post the 3am picture of you stumbling drunk down a back alley to piss, or do you post the one that has perfect lighting and shows a great smile with you giving the shocker to thin air? We form an online persona to escape reality and befriend people we haven’t spoken to in 15 years just for the ability to brag that we have more than 500 hundred “friends”.
We don’t show our real selves on the net for the same reason we dress a bit nicer at work, or for the theatre, or when we go out to a club: We want people we don’t know to see us the way we want to be seen, not the way we actually are. We spend all this time in public school being told “be yourself” when the truth is, in ever y area of our lives we are someone different. This is actually an area discussed in The Tipping Point a fantastic book that in one chapter discusses how our personalities are situational and mutable, not constant. You could even extend this theory to divorce, work problems etc. When the situations change, your mutate your personality, unknowingly and change the former perception of you to other parties.
This isn’t going to change, and in fact I don’t want it to change. I enjoy being my-multiple-selves and I enjoy each wake of life as much as I can, but I am also aware that “I” is not a singular word. So enjoy your life, use Twitter and Facebook and MySpace, but don’t be fooled into believing you are that person. You are who you are, not what people read about you.
Editor’s Note: cwalken, whose twitter page I mention in the post above has now been asked by Twitter to be changed to explicitly state that he is not Affiliated with the real Christopher Walken.
Second Editor’s Note: Twitter has now removed the page and the ghost writer has come forward.
Multiple personalities are the way to go but its nice to find that special person that you can settle down with, relax, and finally be yourself. I <3 you Stoss. You are the wind beneath my wings.
Also Twitter is mostly full of people who think so highly of themselves that they think that people actually want to know their every move. I mean having your own blog is egotistical enough but at least it allows you to voice your opinion and get things off your chest or have a creative outlet of some sort. Somehow I don’t think “Woke up. Found ham. Ate it. Rejoiced.” or “At Terminal 1. Guy in front is wearing a sombrero. He smells of lavender” has the same therapeutic value as a blog.
It can only be a medium of creativity or comedy. If I were to tweet everytime I actually did anything it would only be a hassle to myself. Noone would read it. Hey this just in. Sparkles ate a pizza. Hot off the intertubez. Shocking! I would only be contributing the vast category of topics on the internet filed under “noone cares”.