Nov 5, 2007 12:05 PM
3,272
Enter your username and password.
New York, 3:53 AM
Wed Feb 10
55 posts in the last 24 hours
In the Times Style section's ongoing exploration of "what's inside the Internets," Noam Cohen examines Twitter, a " relatively new program that allows its mostly young members to post 'miniblogs'—running diaries about the mundane details of their lives, in entries of barely two sentences." Sometimes those mundane details include, "Alright this is it. Parked my car. I wish everyone who ever was nice to me well. See you in the next life." He doesn't follow through but still sad. But most times it includes this, from the same suicidal user, Nick Starr: "planning a Ramen noodle lunch after church" and "At church. Be back in about 2 hours twitter" and also "how did u get IKEA furniture in Florida?"
But beyond answering the bigger questions of life (Ikea: here, btw), Twitter also has the "benefit" of amplifying your drunken text messages to everyone you know and some you don't. Take this cautionary tale from Twitter user Chris Messina:
He described how in April he and his partner, Tara Hunt, "had a big fight after we'd been drinking and then she Twittered that she was leaving me." Because her message went out very late, most of the Twitter users who read the posts were in Australia. Many e-mailed Ms. Hunt to ask what happened. Those messages helped persuade the couple to reconsider.Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps, and some (the drunken ones) it seems, with Twitter.
Contact information for this author is not available.
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
Start a new discussion