"Flutter: The New Twitter" is a particularly effective satire of Twitter. To start, it takes the 140 character limit of Twitter to an even further extreme by now limiting it to a clever 26 characters, or "one full English alphabet." Although this sounds reasonable at first, it becomes clear how ridiculous a 26 character limit truly is. In 26 characters, it is nearly impossible to portray anything but the simplest of ideas. This exaggeration, in addition to others such as the auto-updating iPhone App, satirize Twitter and modern society. Nowadays, people expect instant gratification. Twitter is a perfect medium to update yourself on your friends, family, and celebrities in mere seconds, which is the major appeal.
In general, I find Slate V's mockumentary provides a substantial argument to the absurdity known as the Twitter phenomenon. It is great to know what is going on in your friend's life, but to what extent? Personally, I think that the practice of Tweeting status updates to the rest of the world is rather narcissistic. If I did not know that my friend ate roast beef for dinner, it would have no effect on my life. In a world where there are so many fresh, creative high-tech ideas, it can be difficult to distinguish the brilliant from the boneheaded, and I think the mockumentary and I agree the category where Twitter falls.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I also agree about the uselessness of twitter. There is no point to knowing 140 characters of what everyone is doing all the time. That is not enough spance to write anything substancial and everything else is just a waste of time and space. I also like that you pointed out that not knowing what your friend ate for dinner would have no effect on your life. It is true that without twitter our lives would be very much the same, maybe even better. Maybe we would call our friends to find out what is going on in their life instead of relying on twitter to tell us every single move that they make. It is true that much of the craze over twitter comes from that fact that it has become a huge fad with celebrities and the media and because we hear about it all the time we feel like it is necessary for our lives. However, if we pause for a minute and think about it, we realize that there is no point and that the craze over twitter as well as twitter itself is entirely absurd.
ReplyDeleteI agree that twitter is a narcissistic... but would it be wrong to also say that Youtube, Facebook and Myspace where also founded on this narcissism? Perhaps Youtube has in fact outgrown the original intent and has become a larger source of entertainment than of self glorification. Maybe instead of merely posting about yourself, people mainly use Facebook as a way to communicate and stay in touch with friends. Will we at some point see twitter spawn something different and useful from its narcissistic beginning? That's my only hope from Twitters existence.
ReplyDeleteI love how this post is written. I never even thought of the term satire until you mentioned it. But it is a perfect word for the mockumentary. Also, I love the example of not needing to know what your friend ate for dinner and how it would not affect you if you didn't know. People almost feel that way by the way they post such trivial unimportant details just to see if people comment or respond to it. In a way it is people wanting attention and someone to talk to. Quite pathetic in my opinion.
ReplyDelete