Tweets for the Memories

Hello, my faithful readers! My, has it been almost a month already? You must be starved for sustenance! My little lambs have been without their faithful farmer to let them out into the sweet fields of grass and honeysuckle! Never fear, here is a nugget of truthiness for you!

Saw this on a @gawker comment thread: "Q: How can you tell if someone's a vegan? A: Don't worry. They'll tell you."So so true. #fb
— Nathan Johnson (@najohnson84) May 4, 2012

I tweeted this last Friday after reading it in the comments section of an article on Gawker regarding Hitler and some of his strange habits. The commenters were discussing Hitler possibly being a vegan. I thought the comment was funny and also a good way to poke at some of the self-righteous prick vegans I've encountered who make quite a show of announcing that they are vegan and stating very smugly that they basically cannot eat anything. All of these vegans I've met have been Seventh-day Adventists which adds a nice coating of crazy to their prattlings-on about almond butter and wheatgrass smoothies. Bitter, much? You bet!

I was amused yesterday afternoon to see that it was suddenly being retweeted on Twitter. I've never had something I tweeted get passed-on like this so, of course, my immediate thought was, "I'm gonna be famous! I'll be working for the Gawker media empire in no time!" Shoot, I even picked some of the more popular retweeters and tweeted them a personal, "Thanks for the RT!" RT is Twitter shorthand for retweet (don't mind my condescension, apologies).

Sidenote: isn't everything shorthand with Twitter? 140 characters isn't a lot of space to get your thoughts across. I've come across variations of this basic Twitter truism:


"What I hate most about Twitter: finishing a good tweet, having -1 characters left, and then having to decide which grammar crime to commi".


The funny thing about Twitter, time and again, is that it's an illusion of interaction with those more famous and affluent than us. Any type of reciprocation is a validation of your awesomeness! 


Something I didn't even come up with is being retweeted a handful of times by complete strangers!


I'm a genius!


etc.


I like to think that yesterday's strange retweeting episode means something more. Because I look far too deeply into everything! But it doesn't. It doesn't validate me as funny, successful, influential, or anything else that sounds good. I just need to take it for what it was: an amusing thought (that someone else had) being repeated by a few people on a micro-blogging site.

NASCAR Indoctrination

I watched my first full NASCAR race last night. Well, mostly full. I was DVRing it (damn homework!) and was a little behind so I got to fast forward through commercials and the cleanup of that gigantanormous fiery wreck involving Juan Pablo Montoya and an unfortunate jet dryer truck. Sadly, I began to fall asleep even as the race reached it's pinnacle of excitement. Terrible, right? In my defense, it was close to midnight when the race finally finished after myriad cautions, a couple wrecks, and a jet fuel barbecue.

Even though I fell asleep (did I mention how comfy our loveseat is?) the race was not boring. There was a wreck on the second lap for goodness sake! I don't know that I'm ready to declare myself a diehard fan just yet. But the Daytona 500 was pretty entertaining and I think it'll be fun to follow along with all of the soap opera drama that comes with a season of NASCAR.

And then, he wrecked me on turn 3 because I called him a doodoo head! I'm gonna go throw my helmet at him after the race!


No! Danica! Why would you do that?


Because...*sigh* *sniffle* I hate him...and love him so much!


Okay, so that probably won't happen. Wouldn't it be great if it did! :-)

or

Let's try and get Dale on the radio here. Dale, this is DW (Darrell Waltrip), do you have a copy?...Dale?


DW, I think he's done drank too much Diet Mountain Dew. He's in the caffeine zone now. Only a victory here today will bring him back.


A bit more likely, but no. Still, wouldn't that be crazy and silly and great? Considering how much sponsor butt-kissing that goes on, it wouldn't surprise me if it was in Dale Earnhardt Jr's contract to drink as much Diet Mountain Dew as possible during a race and then be sure to thank them for the opportunity after his kidneys and bladder have exploded.

I get the gratuitous sponsor-thanking that goes on in every single interview done with a driver/crew chief/owner. Racing is expensive and it's important to keep that money flowing. Here's an interesting article I found from USA Today: Sponsors Make NASCAR's Wheels Go 'Round.

I'm enjoying my NASCAR education so far. What does everyone else think of the sport?

Google Minus

So I deleted my Google+ profile last week. Big news, I know. Let's take a trip down memory lane and examine my short experience on that site:

When I first heard about it I wasn't even sure what it was. Google Plus? What the eff is that? I read a few (or 20) articles from the oh-so-enlightened tech folks who were blessed with advanced previews of the service. The Buzz (sorry Google) was building. It was going to be like Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and email all rolled into one! Awesome!

Do you have social media fatigue?

Uh, maybe.?.?

Then come to Google Plus where you can park your social media-ing ass and gush about how much better you are than the Farmville hordes on Facebook and Lady Gaga sycophants on Twitter!

Whatevs.

But I was enthralled and I wanted in. When I finally got someone I know to tag me in a post, which was delivered to my email with an enticing link to The Plus, I clicked and clicked and clicked and clicked until I was finally able to register and join the site. Success! And it was beautiful for five minutes while I set up my profile and invited all of my friends and family. Five minutes more of excitement while I scoured the site for tech writers that I follow on Twitter. Great!

Then I started posting articles I thought were interesting, just like on Twitter. Or Facebook, for that matter. And I posted some more. Occasionally I would +1 (The Plus' version of the 'Like' button) some famous person's post. Or I'd add a comment equivalent to "Awesome!" Meh. The Plus, like Twitter, has lots of interesting people on it who post interesting things. But I seem to have this aversion to wanting to dialogue with said famous people on The Plus/The Twitter (sidebar: I love it when people refer to Twitter as 'The Twitter.' It makes me giggle inside). First, I usually don't have anything worthwhile to say that someone else hasn't said a million times before. Second, said famous people don't really care what you have to say. Third, about a billion other people are blowing up the comments/+1s/reshares of these posts so I get lost in the shuffle. Fourth, I don't really feel like getting into a discussion or flame war with these strangers. Pointless.

What about family and friends? Those are the folks that I really care about communicating with on social media. They're the only ones who will reliably communicate with you, anyway. All the rest of it is just an illusion. Anyway, what about them on The Plus? Well, a few of them joined after I cajoled them. And then there was silence. Because. They. Were. All. On. Facebook.

That's my big takeaway from The Plus. Everyone is already on Facebook. Sure sure, you can join the Plus to rid yourself of the rusty anchor of Facebook that's dragging you down.

You can start over with only the people you really want to communicate with on Google Plus! 

Great! You can do that on Facebook, too.

Yeah, but you can find new people to stalk on Google Plus!

That's what Twitter's for.

Mike Elgan talked about social media fatigue and ditching all of it in favor of Google Plus. He called it the Google+ diet. Mike is a huge Plus user and a respected journalist with a large following. The idea sounds great, but the problem is that if I ditched all of my social media sites except for The Plus, nobody would care. I don't have that much gravitas to get people to join me on The Plus. Emailing/blogging/twittering/ranting/checking-in-ing only from The Plus would only serve to confuse and annoy my family and friends (only people I'm really concerned with interacting with, anyway--Twitter stalking notwithstanding) who would likely then ignore the email notification they received from my post.

So, while I joined The Plus enthusiastically and spammed the hell out of my contacts to join The Plus and leave Dirty Old Facebook for good, it didn't work. What was I to do? If I wanted to converse with any of them, I had to stay on Facebook. But I still wanted to be active on The Plus, trying to post interesting things and show that I was one of the smart ones.

And it wore me the fuck out.

And the answer for me is not to ditch Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare (love Foursquare), Blogger, Tumblr, ad naseum. The answer was to ditch The Plus and embrace my Facebook-folks and my celebrity stalking on Twitter.

I always felt disconnected going from Facebook to The Plus. Like I went from a warm friendly gathering at a coffee shop to a white-washed bullshit convention on how great The Plus is. I'm sure most people ignore what I post on Facebook, as they did on The Plus. But at least those who are ignoring me on Facebook actually care about me! (well, maybe they do. At least some of them do).

Twitter

It's odd how first, came Myspace. Then Facebook. And now, Twitter. I pretty much accepted Myspace whole-heartedly when I stumbled upon it. Facebook, I resisted for a while. But now I use almost exclusively Facebook for my pseudo-stalking and social (egocentric) updates. I even delved into Twitter. But I really don't see the appeal. There's plenty of hype, with businesses and athletes using it to communicate to potential customers and fans, but I just don't see the appeal. Twitter is pretty much just one big status update, that thing that Facebook pioneered and made it so even the most casual, thirty-times-removed types of friends can see just what it is you're up to at various points throughout the day. Twitter's just the latest craze, that's my opinion. A fad. I don't see the appeal. I guess we'll see, right? Perhaps I'll even get sucked in.