Dear Miss Applesassy,
All my friends have cell phones and keep talking about something called Twitter. When we met for lunch last week I tried to ask them about it, but they all just burried their heads in their phones and started typing in response. What should I do?
Sign me,
Cold Shouldered and Clueless
Dear Cold,
Miss Apps is sympathetic to your plight. It is indeed rude to turn ones attention to electronic communications in preferace to real world interaction, (unless of course you are Paris Hilton, who uses this very technique to avoid paparazzi and the cronically uncool).
Your friends suffer from the new and viral condidtion of faceaphobia. The social security and instant gratification of texting short messages has impeded their desire to actually speak. Unfortunatly there is currently no cure, but unusually high cell phone bills or remote camping trips often curb such cravings temporarily.
If these relationships are of importance to you, the best course of action is to “do as the Romans do.” Get yourself a cell phone with a good text messaging package, go on-line, and sign up for Twitter. It’s free, it’s fun, and will allow you to broadcast short messages of 140 characters or less to hundreds, (or if you are popular), even thousands of people in less than a nano second. Those who are involved in your netwrok can sign up to recive your tweets, and you in turn can follow the twitterings of people who interest you.
The key, of course, is to make sure your messages are not boring or socially damaging. When tweeting on Twittter, one must use care to avoid looking like a twit. Miss Apps does not want to know what you ate for lunch, what time you are going to bed, or who you are doing those things with, as she is neither a compulsive eater nor a peeping Tom. She would however be most interested in any announcments you have that might be of use to others. If for instance, you just discovered a discount outlet for some new form of zero calorie chocolate, you my dear, would posess the social capital for a very sweet tweet.
Sometimes people use Twitter to gather a group of friends together after a football game, or to hook up at a business conferrence. Just type “Meet-up at The Acme Grill 6PM” and send it to all your collegues. The technique has been known to successfully launch some rather large impromtu parties, which might be just the type of twitterific social stimulation your phobic friends need. Twitter can also be used to announce a new product, inform people about breaking news, or let others know of local concerns. For instance, if you happen to live in Manhattan and know of a major traffic tie up that might cause Miss Apps to be late for her lunch, a quick tweet of warning could be most useful to all.
With warm regards,
Miss Applesassy
