The Red and Black

Issue date: 4/20/09 Section: Opinions

BILL RICHARDS

I keep having a recurring dream. In one corner of the room, two girls are quoting Spice Girls lyrics to each other. In another, a Republican operative keeps yelling about how happy he is after a long week of teabagging. In the back, a former coworker complains that he keeps hearing the same two Soulja Boy songs at a bar downtown.

All this can be yours, too. Just start a Twitter account.

You wouldn't be the first since, according to Nielsen, visits to Twitter have increased 1,382 percent since February 2008. This growth has been accompanied (and probably aided) by a level of media attention unseen since Bristol Palin gave birth to her son, Yahtzee Jebediah Calculus Palin.

But I can't think about Twitter without also considering the cyclical nature of Web phenomena. I am reminded of previous social networking tools at their peaks.

Just like MySpace and Facebook before it, Twitter is the new tool that will help friends keep in touch, creative types network and small businesses market their products.

Did I mention that everyone is Tweeting, and the only people who aren't are privacy-obsessed Luddites?

But that's where the Twitter phenomenon departs from its

forebears.

The difference, I think, lies in the purposes of the respective sites.

As in, though I recall having specific reasons for joining MySpace and Facebook, I'm pretty sure Twitter has no point.

For instance, I joined Facebook (or, as it was known then, Thefacebook) because I figured it would help me keep in touch with new friends in this strange and unfamiliar town, as well as study the indigenous population. Facebook, as advertised, has continued to provide me with this service.

Likewise, I joined MySpace to promote my music. MySpace lets you put up tracks and find other artists to collaborate with. MySpace provides me with a service, too.

Twitter, though, appears to share none of these traits. Its only purpose is to ask "What are you doing?"

We've all heard that question before. It's the most open-ended and dangerous of questions. You can't discern the questioner's motive until you answer, and by then it's too late.

It is nothing but a vague signal that someone somewhere is keeping tabs on you in some way. From a significant other, it has the possibility of being needy or accusatory. From a long-neglected friend, it can be just as bad. Just writing about it makes me anxious.

Until recently, it's been a question restricted mostly to text messages. But thanks to Twitter, I'm being pestered with it online, too. Great.

Perhaps in this sense Twitter represents the next step in social networking. Instead of providing you with a valuable tool, as MySpace and Facebook do, it just encourages you to shout at people for no reason in particular. Why tell the world that you're standing in line at Jittery Joe's? Why not tell the world that you're standing in line at Jittery Joe's?

Of course, I use Twitter like nearly everybody else. I find that the neat, clean-looking column of Tweets has a certain hypnotic quality to it, as does the act of Tweeting itself.

But still, it's worth asking: what's the point?

- Bill Richards is the editorial cartoonist for The Red & Black. Follow him on Twitter @funtimewithbill.

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