My friends, if you have been reading Jagged Noodles for the past two years, you know of my vehement disdain of Facebook and Twitter. And I don’t use the word “vehement” lightly … mainly because I don’t know where the emphasis goes. Is it VEE-heh-ment? Or Veh-HEE-ment?…VEH-heh-ment?
However, recently, with the fall of Mubarak, (what a quitter, by the way! If his mother had been a ‘Tiger Mother’, he wouldn’t have been such a failure) I have started re-examining my thoughts. Twitter and Facebook, I have come to realize, like fire or religion or dental floss, can be used for good or for evil. Tweets and wall postings can record the trivial, useless details of people’s lives, or help bring down a dictator.
So I opened a Twitter account. You can now follow Jaggednoodles for hilarious updates such as: “I’m eating chips and salsa! Southwest-style is the best!” and “Is it me, or does it feel like Friday today?”
These last few days, I have learned a lot about myself and the world. Mainly because I follow OMGFacts (did you know that only 11 percent of kids can tie their shoes?! OMG!).
Anyway. First, followers are hard to come by. People’s attention is constantly divided among a myriad of different things. No one, except maybe Oprah, can hold the attention of the masses. So far, I have 15 followers, which is quite sad. EverettStorage as 276 followers and it’s a storage company! In this wired society, there are few greater slaps to the ego than not having enough connections. If you have fewer than 200 “followers” or “friends” or “links” you might as well exile yourself to the wilderness of Mountlake Terrace, far from civilization, living among woodland creatures. (@EverettStorage: I hate you for having 276 followers. You’re a storage company!)
Second, any idiot can “tweet” but good tweeting is hard work. It requires focus to cut down your complex thoughts into 140 characters each. The worst part, though, is realizing that you actually have very few complex thoughts! Or maybe I have complex thoughts, but I’m used to crafting 700-word essays to express profound concepts such as “digital toilets are awesome!” Learning to communicate a meaningful idea with only a few words is actually one of the fundamentals of good writing and general communication. All of us should learn this skill. Apparently research shows that people pay more attention when you use fewer words to communicate. Fewer words, more focused audience. At least, that’s what I thought the report said. I stopped reading after the first paragraph.
Above all, I have learned the valuable lesson that many of us forget, and that is: The world is not binary, with everything classified as one or zero, (e.g., Netflix good, Facebook bad). It is complex, with many different variations and outcomes. I am starting to learn to use Twitter for my own purposes. For example, when I’m out and about, and a Jagged Noodles idea comes to mind, (“This pair of Swiss Army pocket pliers are great for plucking unibrow hair. Hm, I should write a column about beauty tips for real men …”) I can just tweet it and have that idea recorded so I don’t lose it.
There you have it. What next, I open a Facebook account? Way ahead of you! I opened one and have … 9 friends! I think I’ll stick to Twitter first. My goal this year is to have more followers than EverettStorage. Please, please be my follower so I can beat EverettStorage. I mean, come on, it’s a storage company!
Look, an easier-to-remember website: www.Jaggednoodles.com
