Twitter is at the bottom-feeder end of Information Overload. Ipad is at the top. Both can be useful and delightful, but recently, I've decided to develop a much stricter attitude to what kind of information I give room in my life to. I don't need to know everything. I don't need to have access to more books than I can read in a lifetime. Frankly, the thought depresses me.
I can choose what and when I think about things. Thinking. Remember that, people? Stuffing every orifice full of media and everyone else's inane chatter is not good for you.
Yes, read. Yes, talk to people. Of course. But for Heaven's sake, don't binge on all the chaff, Z-list celebrity gossip and tiniest minutiae of peripheral news items. You don't need it. Don't grant space in your head for it.
The thing about Twitter and any tool is learning how to get what you want out of it. Use it cleverly. Don't allow it to suck you in and convince you that it's important. It is not. Take control of it.
Many people seem to throw themselves at online forums, blogs and social networking sites like an inexperienced rider on a Ducati motorcycle. They think they can ride it, but the bike takes off under them and the machine is driving them.
I love online forums, blogs and social networking sites. I've been active online since there was such a thing as 'online'. It's just now I'm finally learning to use these damn things properly.
Twitter is for getting to know what my favourite people and companies are up to. It occasionally also just makes me giggle. Like this morning, when someone wrote: "Dear delusional teenage girls. A guy who glitters and won't have sex with you is not a vampire. He's gay." Twilight, The Eclipse is released in UK this weekend and it's Gay Pride today. Blam. What a lovely little witticism. Then it's time to turn off the computer and go outside. Or to the cinema.
