This Is the First and Last Time I Will Use the Word 'Tweet' on This Blog

Is there a more odious and nauseating phenomenon on the face of the earth than Twitter? Well, there was, once, and it was the "update your status" or "poke someone" things on Facebook, but times change fast on the Internet, so now we have this New Dumb Thing, my feelings about which can be nicely summed up in the convenient animated short above.

This is how horrible Twitter is: U.S. senators are using it.

You know, I recently went to a panel event where the topic was "Book Marketing On the Web," and, God, it was irritating. One of the panelists, bless her, was beside herself with excitement about Twitter. She had out her laptop and was logged on, giving us constant updates about all the Twittering that was happening about the very event we were all at. At one point, she said something like, "Here's an example of Twitter in action: someone in this very room said it's a little hot in here and someone should open a window." Ha ha ha, laughed the audience, many of whom had their own devices out and were probably doing something equally grotesque with them. Then someone opened a window. Thank God for Twitter, because otherwise how could we humans have relayed that message?!

Sorry, but this shit is stupid.

I understand how technology is changing bookselling, book marketing, book promotion and all that. That's a no-brainer. But I'm sorry, I'm just not convinced that Twittering is essential to this process. Twittering is essential to no process. It is masturbatory uselessness in action.

My favorite part of the panel event, actually, was at the very beginning. The moderator was asking the audience how we all had heard about the event. She named off different methods: LinkedIn (a few hands), Facebook (a few hands), Twitter (a few hands), websites/newsletters (a few hands), and, lastly, "old-fashioned word-of-mouth." At this, the majority of hands in the room went up.

Twitter that, LOLCATS.