[lbo-talk] Twitter: >40% pointless babble

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Thu Aug 13 09:58:06 PDT 2009


On Thu, 13 Aug 2009, Doug Henwood wrote:


> Broadcasting the news to scores/hundreds/thousands that you are having a
> sandwich - or, as an otherwise very smart and literate friend of mine
> once inexplicably posted, "I just steamed some sugar snap peas" - is
> weird.

I'm of your generation so I share your perspective and reactions, but just to be a devil's advocate, can't this sort of thing be interpreted as phatic? As a kind of social lice picking where the point is simply to feel in contact? The gestures are empty precisely because they are simply acting out, and feeling the pleasure of, being part of a group?

The problem with elderly gentlemen like us may be that we give way too much thought to such utterances when they're just supposed to glide over us like water. Kind of like the serious young person's fallacy of taking words seriously when people ask you how you are or comment on the weather. Sending this sort of stuff back in forth may take place on the same sort of autopilot as weather talk.


> But that would be in a social context

Is this, lbo-talk, a social context? I feel pretty strongly it is. But it's entirely virtual.

I'm not saying twitter is the same in intellectual content as lbo-talk. But I'm saying: it's just as social as lbo-talk.

Nor am I saying virtual sociality is the same as face-to-face sociality or even voice to voice. I'm just saying: it is a social context. In fact, it's sociality may be it's whole content for the 40% in question.

Michael



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