Twitter Abuse

I use Twitter, you could say I am a twitterer, a twit or even a twat, this does not bother me. I find it useful for keeping up with my favourite comedians and musicians, not to mention sharing jokes with friends in no more than 140 characters.

A lot of people call me a loser or sad git because of my allegiance to twitter but I don't mind, one of my close friends who led the charge in declaring me as as a twit/twat signed up and frequently uses twitter himself.

It was today I realised I can not quite vent my petty furies with the world in just 140 characters, no matter how hard I try which is why I am writing this.

There is a function on twitter known as the "Retweet" (known as an RT to those who understand twitter jargon). People can "RT" what other people have said if they find it interesting, enlightening, humerous or just agree with it to allow a wider audience to view it. It was today that a celebrity tweeted a little fact about patterns in time and date that will occur this year. This tweet was RTed by hundreds of dedicated followers so inevitably I eventually stumbled upon it. Within seconds of reading it I had found two major errors in his little "fact". I pointed this out to the friend of mine who had retweeted it and she was surprised to realise how foolish both mistakes were. Mistakes are irritating, people foolishly believing them without thinking is so much worse.

It then dawned upon me why people view twitter in such a negative light, the majority of people using it just mindlessly accept, obey and pass on whatever a vaguely famous person has said. I will be taking extra care to read through whatever I retweet in future.

This absence of independent thought is destroying the youth 140 characters at a time, this is truly, abuse of twitter.


N.B. I apologise for the lack of structure, as my address shows these are Irritated Mutterings, just snippets of anger from my head.