In Defense of Twitter

Do people still hate Twitter? I know for a period of time it was simultaneously the most important and most pointless "tool" the Internet cooked up since ... since the Internet came to fruition, I guess. My mom watches cable news all day every day, and a few months ago out of nowhere, she felt compelled to tell me, "What is Twitter? I don't even know what it is, but I hate it."

I embraced Twitter relatively early because I'm one of those self-deprecatingly self-centered people the Internet was made for. (That and I fell out of the habit of blogging at length about my life, but still felt compelled to get my ever so important fleeting thoughts out into the world for others to "enjoy.") I never figured out how to set up updating from my phone (which is ancient anyway, forcing me to wait until I get an iPhone to figure out that nonsense), but that hasn't stopped me from accruing close to 2,000 tweets in a year and a half. I have Twitter friends. I follow all the big celebrities. (Well, big to me. Simon Pegg. Kevin Smith. The cast of It's Always Sunny In Philadephia. Not like, Ashton Kutcher or anything.) I learn interesting things from lots of different people on Twitter, so I've generally seen it as possessing a decent amount of value, as long as you use it right.

Yeah, once you get the hang of it, it's pretty awesome. And plus, it allows things like this to happen:

I posted this on a whim and then went to bed, thinking nothing would come of it. (This is the photo, by the way.)

I woke up the next day to these.

Ted Fucking Leo, man! TWO SEPARATE RESPONSE TWEETS! From Theodore Francis Leo! In retrospect, I regret saying "Test!" at the end (even though it really was a test, to see if he would respond, a-doy.) and should have perhaps added more details (RU Class of 2007! Woo! People thought I was in the pharmacy program! Haha, that's crazy!), but, it is what it is. And it's an awesome story to tell, especially when I vocalize the sound of the button he linked me to.

So yeah. Anything that puts me in direct communication with Ted Leo gets a seal of approval for me. Keep on tweeting on, tweeters.