Friends, Romans, Twitizens...

Lend me your ears.

"Twitter" was deemed the "Top Word of 2009" by the Global Language Monitor today.

I died a little inside, at first. Wanting to rant and rave about how much I hate Twitter, I went to bbc.com and just did a search for Twitter. I wanted to find something to read to try and wrap my brain around this Twitter idea.

I came upon an article from Time, posted in June of this year, titled "How Twitter Will Change the Way we Live." I scoffed.

However, upon reading it, I understand the points the author made in the name of Tweets. Below is a list of his top 5 reasons why Twitter will change the way we live.

1) Twitter provides an "Open Conversation"
The author uses an example of how he was sitting in a small lecture which had its own Twitter hashtag, that way those in the hall could Tweet about the event in real time, and all posts could be compiled and found via a hashtag search. This sort of act provides a space for long, open conversation.

The same thing happened to me when I attended the Associated Collegiate Press conference in Austin, Texas just a few weeks ago.

The speaker that commencement address stated that he understood why people would constantly be looking down during his speech - they were on Twitter, talking about the event. The event had a hashtag, and so it was easy to post stuff about the event for people to search for.

In the end, though, I couldn't help but wonder - besides for the entertainment of searching through what people thought of the incredibly droll speaker - what good does this serve?

And in the case of the author sitting in a conference of no more than 40 people (when the conference I attended had hundreds if not thousands of people), what was preventing those 40 people from simply talking amongst themselves without Twitter?


2) Twitter represents what some have dubbed the "Super-Fresh Web"
Essentially, this means that, while search engines like Google return the most efficient or best known results, Twitter provides a chronological, live feed. It makes the web "super-fresh," I suppose.

3) From Toasters to Microwaves
Users are constantly updating Twitter by themselves. The addition of the hash, the @ (to tag someone or someone's feed), and the applications for Twitter (on iPhone, BlackBerry, etc.) were all user-created.

4) News, Opinion, Searching, Advertising
Self-explanatory.

5) End-User Innovation
This is essentially the same thing as number 3. The author mentions that many believe America has been ousted by China and India in the field of innovation in the 21st century, but he brings up that America invented Google, Youtube, Facebook, Xbox, Twitter, etc. And while most argue that "inventing a new mouse trap," as he puts it, is true innovation, the author for Time argues that innovation can also come in the form of user innovation. So, again, the user inventions of the hash, @ tagging, etc. are seen as a positive attribute of the age of Twitter.

Terms from this article that offended me:

Twittersphere - a collection of Tweets? a collection of Twitter pages? I don't know.
Twitizens - users of Twitter? Dumb.
Twitterfied - when something becomes like Twitter, I guess.



The issues I have with this analysis and Twitter in general.
While I agree that Twitter provides a fresh place for posting, sharing and reading newsworthy and interesting articles and pieces, I don't believe it's being used to its potential.

An August '09 study found that, from a pool of 2000 random Twitter posts, 40% were found to be "pointless babble," along the lines of "Hey, I'm mowing my lawn," or "Listening to Raffi, lol."

Twitter's purpose is micro-blogging, and the same issue that occurs in blogging occurs in Twitter. When blogs first became big news, the issue became that anyone can have a blog, there is really no efficient way to filter the good from the crap and a lot of it is pointless babble.

The same applies to Twitter. I guess Ashton Kutcher has a million followers, and he promotes non-profits and charitable organizations through his Tweets. These are all great things, and probably a better use of micro-blogging. However, Jim down the street might have a Twitter which he updates every time he changes his kitchen trash liner.

The Time article states that humans find pleasure in reading about the mundane.

"The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this "ambient awareness": by following these quick, abbreviated status reports from members of your extended social network, you get a strangely satisfying glimpse of their daily routines. We don't think it at all moronic to start a phone call with a friend by asking how her day is going. Twitter gives you the same information without your even having to ask."

I couldn't disagree more. I think we find pleasure in procrastinating and in reading what doesn't matter. That's why Facebook status updates are so consistent and why Facebook invented the "Like" button. You can simply scroll through a million friend status updates, decide which ones you "Like," and commit to this act with no more than one finger and a set of eyes. We're lazy, bored, strung-out, and we don't want to do any real work.

If Twitter users used Twitter at least half of the time to post relevant, interesting or newsworthy facts (either by linking articles or even simply posting a controversial opinion on a matter) it would make Twitter worth the while. Granted, I can't say by the numbers that half of Twitter users don't do this already, but I can only imagine they don't.

We already scroll through shortened news updates on news websites. The link is typically the headline and a small chunk of the lede sentence. This is what Twitter is capable of. Only with Twitter, real people are posting these things - your friends, Jim down the street, your mother and maybe Shaq. People you know are becoming involved with the news, and that is how the future of Twitter should be.

If Twitter continues to be a shriveled social networking site, then it will die in five years. People will move onto the next big thing, and Twitter will be left behind with all this potential.

Stereotyping: a tale as old as Time

Time magazine, Nov. 23, 2009.

Front page: A photograph of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, cropped to just the head (as if a mug shot) with a black bar censoring his eyes. In negative lettering across this bar reads "TERRORIST?"



And I thought the stereotyping couldn't get any worse.

The article within (titled: "Terrified... Or Terrorist?") examines Hasan's history, life and apparent motives up to the fateful day where he would take the lives of 13 members of the American Armed Forces at Fort Hood.

The skepticism between whether he was deranged or a acting in a plot of terrorism is understandable, but the way in which it was delivered in a prestigious publication such as Time, is questionable.

The front page illustration aside, the inside page includes another illustration, this one of Hasan in front of a mosque, with red paint splattered over his face and the blue field of stars behind his head. The major's face is stone-cold, and the red paint reads like blood - blood on the face and hands of Hasan.



The article begins with a feature style lede that is offensive to me, a non-Muslim.

It reads verbatim:

"What a surprise it must have been when Major Nidal Malik Hassan woke up from his coma not in paradise but in Brooke Army Medical Center, deep in the heart of Texas, under security so tight that there were armed guards patrolling both the intensive-care unit and checkpoints at the nearest freeway off-ramp."

After the first read of this, I had to double-take and try again. There are so many things wrong with this introduction.

1) It invokes the imagery of Muslim martyrs believing they will be welcomed in "paradise" for doing harm to infidels. The text does not read, literally or even through inference, "heaven." It reads "paradise." It might as well pander to the "being met by 1000 virgins" stereotype as well, and include something about meeting Saddam Hussein for a glass of sherry and a romp down the golden paved streets.

2) Hasan hasn't been on trial yet, and the tone of this story sets him up immediately as the bad guy.

Sure. It's a touchy subject. It just happened. But no where does this article read "commentary" or "editorial." Entering the text, I should find objective information and fact-based sourcing, which there is plenty of. However, the author twists the story to not only demonize Hasan within the very first paragraph, but she glorifies the shooter of Hasan, Kimberly Munley.

"And who denied him his martyrdom? That would be Kimberly Munley, the SWAT-teem markswoman nicknamed Mighty Mouse, who with her partner ran toward the sound of gunshots at the Soldier Readiness Center..."

Her nickname was Mighty Mouse, huh? How about her favorite TV show and other leisure activities she enjoys when she's not saving the country oh-so-valiantly? The tone of the story couldn't be more one-sided.

I am not at all suggesting that we should glorify the shooter. In a time in America's history where school-shootings is perhaps more prevalent than ever and acts of domestic terrorism seem to be occurring more often, I understand the need to analyze the situation. And in a situation as such, I certainly understand the need to pay tribute to those who have died.

But this story is handled so sloppily, that if I were a Muslim-American, I could only respond to a story that demonizes and stereotypes my culture with utter frustration. Already deeply affected and hurt by the fact that their culture has been sullied once again in the US, how else could they respond to a piece of journalism in perhaps the most well known American magazine that essentially reads:

Hasan was a practicing Muslim with a lot of problems. Were those problems the reason why he attacked? We don't know. But he was Muslim, and owned the Koran, and probably was expecting paradise for his martyrdom.

Time should have thought twice before letting emotion sway journalistic insight. The story contains a lot of interesting fact, but it is too darkly construed by the overtones of passion and emotion in the wake of another tragic domestic shooting.

This only provides evidence for the argument that we will never be done stereotyping, and, especially in the event of a tragedy, we would rather define and analyze the event through stereotypes then consider any alternatives.