Don't Follow Me

Twitter is on the cover of the latest Time Magazine. This like the prisoner's last words to the firing squad "Hey thanks guys!"

You have read my past articles on Twitter. I called for it's fail back in March. It's still alive and kicking out 140 character snippets of incremental movements of millions of users. I won't say gazillions, because I am going to hazard a guess here, that about 65% of people who join, never get past one "tweet".

Steven Johnson wrote the cover story on Twitter for Time Magazine, and it smacks of an unintentional obituary for print magazines. I have read Time Magazine since I found the "People" section in the back as a little kid, I was enraptured of the celebrity news. It was my window to the world, the place I could find the latest goings on in digestible pieces with nice color graphics. Now I am letting my subscription die after it expires this year. Every issue lays sadly by the front door, begging me to open it up and to read the "Predictable to Shocking" page of human behavior. The only predictable outcome is that I will finally throw it out without cracking it open.

Now back to why Twitter should die.

It's not the Kutcher vs CNN popularity contest that put me over (Kutcher dueled with CNN as to who would hit 1 million followers), it is the daily bits of chatter that did me in. The closest I can come to describing what Twitter is like is this: imagine being able to read minds and you can't turn it off. That's what Twitter is like, however you can leave Twitter by clicking off. The minutiae of thought bubbles is enough to drive one mad, let alone a whole room full of it. My thoughts are enough to keep me busy with it's endless bits of fluff floating through, I don't need a butterfly catcher to gather everyone else's.

"What are you doing?"

Social Media is just all of us getting together online to exchange ideas, thoughts, products and other social sundries. What Twitter does is drive that home in endless streams of post it notes streaming on your screen. My love affair with Twitter has become a cold shoulder, yet it stalks me on my Facebook, by people who stream their every Twitter thought onto their Walls. Not only can you read it on Twitter, you can read it on Facebook, and if you missed it there, it's on your Friendfeed. I am the Fugitive running from the multi-headed monster that wants to hold me down and to tell me that they ran out of coffee.

So Twitter, please die so that I can get back to my own thoughts and not have to hear what Ashton Kutcher thinks about his hot wife. Thank You.

Image: Ophelia Chong /Forget Me