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

[// ravi]

On Aug 13, 2009, at 12:58 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
> 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?
>

And what of not-so-elderly gents and ladies who don't live in a  
metropolis and within walking or subway distance of a warm embrace and  
weighty considerations? And what of those of us, who unlike Doug's  
unreliable amigo, are just not wise but only otherwise? Ain't we a  
twitter?


> I'm not saying twitter is the same in intellectual content as lbo- 
> talk.

I suspect Chris Doss thinks lbo-talk *is* Twitter.

	--ravi