Why I don’t use Twitter

The library of congress has decided to store tweets. My knee-jerk reaction to hearing this was that it is a bad idea, but decided to let it settle in some and see if good may come of it.

Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I still think it’s a bad idea.

I’ve heard the argument that tweets provide a snapshot of the collective psyche of people (at least those that use twitter) during a given time to be mined for information at some point in the future. I wonder, though, if there really is value there. Take, for example, the earthquake that happened in Japan. The people that actually experienced it were not (for the most part) twittering. And even if they were, the infrastructure that allowed for postings like that were falling down around them, so how many actually got through? As for the people that did not experience it, they were watching it on the news and twittering their impressions, which were based upon the impressions of the newscasters, so the tweets could be considered a bit redundant.

Tweeting has long bothered more because of where its origins lie than anything else. I’ve long contended that things like twitter arose because our society has made content consumption a priority. So much so that existing content is being consumed more rapidly than can be professionally produced. As such, new avenues to give voices to anyone with a keypad enables massive amounts of content generation to happen. I don’t see a problem with granting a voice to anyone and everyone who has something to say, but while brevity may be the soul of wit, there is more that need apply.

There must still be wit.

I’ll admit I can be a bit of a luddite when it comes to mobile communication. I did not appreciate the benefit of text messaging until reading an article about an inexperienced doctor in Africa needing to perform an amputation to save a man’s life getting the notes from a more experience doctor in London via text message. The information needed to be clear and concise, which is not easily conveyed over a bad voice connection stretching halfway across the world. In the same vein, it is very possible that Twitter has merit to it that I’ve not found. But as with any tool, there is the useful, practical purpose, and then there’s what everyone actually uses it for. Cell phones to call people in the next room. Facebook to keep up with people you see every day. These technologies have enormous benefit, but we use them to make our experiences more shallow, more brief, less meaningful.

And now the library of Congress is going to keep a record of it.

The merits of work you don’t want to do.

I don’t care for painting. And by don’t care of painting I mean that when faced with painting I revert to a state of maturity that my wife has trouble telling whether its me or my 22 month old son who is in distress. Painting with a roller isn’t so bad, but the edges, the preparation with moving furniture, laying down drop cloths (knowing full well that even if the cloths prevent paint from getting on the floor, the paint will still get on the underside of your shoe, and you’ll track it right off the drop cloth when you go to the bathroom), and the tape.

I really don’t like the tape. Putting it up or taking it down.

You might think, “Yeah! Let’s pull that tape down and admire our work!” Except that you have to be meticulously careful that the freshly dried and still not quite stuck to the wall paint does not have a better bond to the tape than it down the wall, and promptly come down as a sheet of messy, damp paint. Even when it works, it’s not perfect. Some paint drips past, or leaks around the edge, leaving you with marks that you then have to figure out how to get rid of.

And of all the painting jobs, I believe that ceilings are the worst. That incessant gravity ensures that whatever is below the roller; namely, you, is showered with paint. Mostly in small dots that occlude your glasses and make you think your going blind, but also in the occasional glob that lands in your hair and is still there three or four days later, prompting the question of, “How did you manage that?”

I have painted all of the ceilings in our house. A few years ago, our furnace had a little trouble resulting in a puff back. An innocuously sounding incident that means your entire house is coated in a film of soot. And I do mean everything. The ice cube trays in the freezer had soot in them.

We turned to our insurance company who kindly had the entire house cleaned. They did a magnificent job, and by the time they were done the house was cleaner than perhaps it had ever been since it was constructed (Perhaps cleaner than that, contractors tend to leave a mess). The only exception were the ceilings. They got mess off, but they were stained and needed to be painted. The insurance provided money to have it painted, but we opted to use those funds to replace our furnace with one that burned cleaner, more efficiently, and actually succeeded in the job of heating the house.

I said, “I can paint the ceilings. It’s easy enough to do.”

And it is pretty easy from a raw skills perspective. You’re not designing a V8 engine or performing heart bypass surgery, but painting ceilings is not a task I would be able to perform for a paycheck. It leaves me cranky.

That being said, the one thing it does do that’s positive is that it sharpens the mind on all of the things you could be doing instead. I had to take at least one break to stop and write down all of the other chores that, while not necessarily fun, were easily preferable to painting ceilings.

The ceilings look great, by the way. We’re quite pleased as it was the last major roadblock to putting our house on the market. And now, off to all of the other wonderful things that need to be done that aren’t painting.