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*Kiss Kiss* at the Hard Rock in Vegas this afternoon I love my...

*Kiss Kiss*

at the Hard Rock in Vegas this afternoon

I love my Mary.

(ps. Meghan’s sitting next to me in our hotel room as I write this - and she goes, “You’re blogging like me! You’re not saying anything!!” I’ve forgotten how to blog more than 140 characters at a time. sigh.)

Randi and I just lipped dubbed Like a Virgin in our brand new...

Randi and I just lipped dubbed Like a Virgin in our brand new matching white bathing suits. yay!

I believe there’s a quote out there from me, roaming...

I believe there’s a quote out there from me, roaming around the internet, where I say (roughly) that A) Twitter is ridiculous and B) insinuate that I’m better than Twitter (I believe the exact phrasing was something along the lines of “I do not have a Twitter. I do not have a fucking Twitter!!”)

Well, I have a “fucking Twitter” now. And guess what? I was wrong. Which just goes to show, if you decide to dismiss something, especially 1) publicly, 2) using expletives, 3) while sitting next to the founder, 4) before you’ve even tried it, you’re 5) an idiot and 6) deserve to be seen as such.

The reason I chose to denigrate Twitter more or less comes down to this: I didn’t “get” it. Or rather, I didn’t “get” why anyone would be interested in reading 140 character updates on the quotidian activities of someone else’s life, without visual aids or lengthy, amusing anecdotes. Moreover, why would anyone want to share such meaningless trivia?

The above video does a fantastic job explaining why. In essence, it comes down to this:

Why you’d follow people on Twitter:
1) You DO care about the quotidian activities of your friends and family. Yeah. You think you don’t, but honestly,140 characters really isn’t that much. By the time you’re bored with their update, it’s over.
2) It DOES make you feel more connected to them and their lives, in a way that intermittent emails, blog posts (if they’re even a blogger!), texts or phone calls (which happen all too rarely) don’t.
3) It doesn’t demand a response from you. All you have to do is read it. I wouldn’t necessarily want a direct text every night from all of my friends telling me things like “Going to bed now!” … that seems invasive. Direct texts - and emails and phone calls - tend to require some action from you. Even a smiley face takes up your time; you have to smiley back at them, otherwise you’re The Bitch Who Didn’t Respond to Their Smiley. Blerg! But seeing their schedules and (short) thoughts at some point every day or couple of days, in a condensed and centralized format, at your convenience, doesn’t require anything from you except you being bored at work. And I’m pretty sure you can handle that.

Why you’d post on Twitter:
1) It’s fast - 140 characters is 20 less than your average text, so you can’t struggle with your words for more than a minute or two, unless you are a total freak-perfectionist, in which case, you have bigger problems. Without a huge time cost, you’re more likely to do it at a greater frequency, which means your friends get a much fuller picture of your day to day life.
2) You can post from your cell, so in those moments - on the subway, waiting for a meeting to start, during sex - when you have an extra thirty seconds, you can type out a quick update. You’d be surprised at how frequently you have a minute or two - but not more! - and how quickly it becomes a habit.
3) Um … it’s sort of fun?

Two caveats:
1) It does have a tendency to make you sound less intelligent than you might otherwise seem. Abbreviations and short, random, seemingly pointless statements frequently do that - that’s why you really only want your friends to read it. They won’t judge you for sounding like a 7-year-old when you Twitter “Ice cream. yay!!” Or, maybe they will, but they’ll do it silently.
2) The only way Twitter really works is if people you care about (or are fascinated by, or want to stalk) use it. You can Twitter alone, but … um … it’s like playing monopoly with yourself. Like, theoretically possible, but not very enjoyable.

So, there you go. Twitter: not such a giant loser-app after all!

PS. That said, I will punch myself in the neck if I ever say, write, or think “I just tweeted.” STFU.

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