But much of it is depressingly self-centered, including news tweets.
Journalism used to be about looking out your window on the world and telling people what you saw and then getting out on the street as fast as possible to report on what others saw. Now, it also involves looking in the mirror and telling the world, here’s some miscellaneous information about fabulous me. I’m in New Hampshire! I’m watching Mitt Romney! His hair is frozen in place and so are my toes! More later!
With Facebook, it’s TMI. With Twitter, it’s that, plus too much “I’’. How many followers do I have? Am I retweeted? What can I do to get mentioned?
Anthony Weiner did more than enough. His lewd Twitter photos represent the ultimate in unnecessary sharing. Even though they were intended for an audience of one, does it get any more self-reverential than what the former New York congressman tweeted?
The thoughts once shared by only the closest of friends are now viewed by millions. Senator Claire McCaskill tweets that she’s tired of “looking and feeling fat.’’ With the help of Twitter-generated supporters, McCaskill lost weight. Couldn’t she have just gone to Weight Watcher’s and interacted with other people facing the same dieting challenges?
Irreverent opinions, often in bad taste, can pop into anyone’s head and there they should stay. When they popped into Nir Rosen’s, he fired them off as tweets that commented rudely and crudely on the sexual assault endured by CBS reporter Lara Logan while she was covering the protests in Tahrir Square. With that, he lost a job at NYU’s Center for Law and Security. As he told Salon, “with 480 characters I undid a long career.’’ Even so, he’s back on Twitter.
