I’m with Garry Trudeau all the way here. Speaking to Media Bistro:
The serious journotwits, though, are at it all day — 30, 40 tweets between breakfast and bedtime. And as someone who follows a lot of these folks, I can assure you that outside of the occasional interesting link, there’s not much added news value.
It’s all about fan base maintenance and trying to pump up follower counts. But high follower counts are like Mardi Gras throw beads — worthless out of context.
What amazes me is that these folks have voluntarily elected to add a new hour-a-day habit to what presumably were pretty busy schedules to begin with. Many of them Twitter about their apparently exemplary parenting, so you do wonder why they don’t turn off their Berrys and recover that hour for the family — or at least make themselves a little more present for the people they’re actually with.
Look, all of us are narcissists to some degree, but most find it embarrassing enough to at least try to hide it. What Twitter and its social media cousins do is disable inhibition. We expect narcissism from our movie stars and politicians and teenagers, but it’s a little surprising to encounter so many otherwise personally modest journalists oblivious to how they’re presenting.
Look, it’s true. Twitter doesn’t just make you stupid, it makes your most vain and most preening instincts socially acceptable. I realize that Twitter can be a great way to organize and build interest in a cause or event, and it provides those of us in the media with an additional way to distribute our links, and thus our content. But I preferred a world where people didn’t think their breakfasts were automatically interesting to the world at large simply because they ate them.