When it first came out, the idea of "microblogging" was an innovation. When everyone was blogging (pro blogging), Twitter came out and provided a service that allowed people to fracture their thoughts, paving the way for an online sharing closer to how humans experience streams of consciousness. Thoughts were shared as they happened. There was no need to organize thoughts, process them into arguments. Tweet as you want, tweet as you are.
Then, it exploded. People signed up, tweetered. Justin Bieber reigned king, jokes were rehashed over and over. Nowadays, shows regularly flash promoted #hashtags. Millions access Twitter through their phones, and computers on a daily basis. Twitter is now more than a website one "logs in" to access; it has become an app we constantly bear wherever we go.
Unfortunately, it has expanded too much for me. I can only tolerate so much twittering. It's populated with discussions I don't care for, it's noisy, it's polluted. More than a global discourse, it has become a noisy marketplace: buy this! support that! watch me! look at what I ate for lunch! notice me! notice me! notice me!
As a thinking person of quite an education, I absolutely REFUSE to accept the fact that the most relevant topic (as per "trending topic") in the world I live in is how some kid with a webcam has a virus, or that a certain annoying private individual is now a lawyer. It's ridiculous. I don't want to live in that world where the majority is concerned with who was on what show last night.
So I will live in denial. I deleted my Twitter account because I REFUSE to accept the fact that millions of Filipinos are dumb as f*ck. I would like to believe that Filipinos are still smart, that we still think, that we still hold conversations of substance, that we care about matters that have long lasting impact.
As Immortal Technique said, "Going platinum has nothin to do with luck, it just means a million people's dumb as f*ck"." Truer words have never been spoken. Trending Topics is one way of Twitter documenting how low our civilization has fallen. Whereas we should have been pursuing intellectual evolution, we've degraded ourselves to birds on a branch.
You can only wake up to so many birds twittering outside your window before you take out your shotgun.
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