If you know me in real life (which goes for maybe three of you), you’ll quickly learn that nothing pisses me off faster than long, drawn out discussions about the actual internet itself. Unfortunately, there is a whole movement of people who have made talking about the internet their entire purpose in life, labeling it social media (or sometimes new media).

First, who brainstormed this redundantly stupid title? Media is the plural of medium - the channels to deliver information. So basically, they took an inherently “social” concept and decided to make sure all of you idiots who don’t know what to call it are overwhelmed by the redundancy. If these people get a hold of naming future scientific innovations, be prepared for “duplicate clones,” “nut-filled ball sacks,” and “climbable ladders.”

Still, what makes social media so social is the fact that everybody and their dog feels the need to talk about it all the time. There are four types of social media users:

1. Elitist Douchebags – The linked video pretty much sums it all up - but don’t think the irony of someone making a video to promote themselves is lost on me. In fact, don’t think the irony of this entire post in general is lost on me, either.
2. People looking to profit — Remember Second Life? It was only a few years ago that national publications and blogs were roaring with praise and hype for the new medium where people could create avatars, make new friends and live an entire “second” life. In other words, instead of making trips to Thailand to pick up the finest 12 year old boys in the country under the name Gary Sanchez, you could now just create a slick avatar with a Fall Out Boy hoodie and see where the evening took you.

   Now, only three years later, Forbes is gleefully counting down to the death of the entire site.

   What changed? Simply put: Every marketer, PR professional, advertising pro and other coin pursuer saw the heavily trafficked site and started asking questions like: “How can we promote this soft drink, airline, video game, religion, porn site, dildo maker, puppy fondler, etc. in this organic world while using a large budget to hide the fact that we are using real world advertising in a fake world environment?”

   Walking through second life became the equivalent of walking through Times Square around 5 pm and avoiding all of the people collecting for charity or offering comedy club passes. (Brief digression: “Hey, do you like jokes?” is possibly my favorite street vendor question ever.) The only difference is, no one needs to walk through Second Life to get to their First Life home.

3. Normal people. These are the normal people who decide to just do something because it sounds neat. They use AIM in college because it is fun to read away messages (or at least was in the late 90’s/early 2000’s). They use Facebook to see their friends’ photos and super poke the girl they were in love with four years ago but never talked to in high school.
4. Late adopting old people. This is the group that finds out what is going on from either the marketers pushing their marketing success in print (OMG - Southwest Airlines is using Twitter!) or from their family and friends who belong to the third category.For example, if you use Facebook, you might have noticed recent friend invitations from your boss, mom, creepy co-worker, neighborhood ex-convict, and your in-laws, all showing up in the past year. If you’re savvy, you’ve probably restricted who can see what in your online profile. But from what I’ve seen, an innocent wall post like” OMG - how’d you like taking it up the pooper at Tad’s party?” can unleash hell across the real and fake parts of your life.

And with this background, we come to Twitter - the newest flavor of the week for social media. It’s been around for awhile… But recently, the service has been the subject of  a public awareness carpet bombing as journalists, newspapers, friends, celebrities and people who want to talk about social media in a new medium besides their blogs, Facebook status updates, digg, delicious and who knows what else have all decided to make this thing ever more mainstream.

If you missed the now-deleted TY Sports Twitter experiment, Twitter is nothing more than a series of 140 character or less status updates that let you know exactly what someone is doing… All. The. Freaking. Time.

Some people talk about their lives and give you the play-by-play. Some people promote articles they read that day, funny stories or photos. Some people promote what their friends wrote in the hope that their friends will promote them. Some people use it for comedy — either through fake profiles or via their real commentary on life. You can find all range of celebrities - from Rainn Wilson to Ashton Kutcher; from Shaq to Charlie Villanueva; Taylor Swift to that High School Musical girl who gets naked.

There’s an admitted fascination in reading what the famous people have to say - But do you know why that is? Because they are freaking famous.

For example, Charlie Villanueva got called out by his coach for Twittering at half time during yesterday’s win over Boston. Coach Skiles said people could question his focus on the game, apparently not realizing that any idiot with a pulse can slap a Twitter update together, no functional brain cells required.

On the other end of things, I started receiving updates about a recruiter’s daily activities in placing jobs, people whining about their bosses, people letting me know that they were buying crack in the warehouse district - you name it. And it was boring as all crap.

Actually it wasn’t even boring. You don’t have time to be boring in 140 characters or less. You can barely order a delicious Subway sandwich in 140 characters or less. At least when everyone and their mom started a blog in the first half of this decade, people were (theoretically) forced to construct real sentences, paragraphs, thoughts, ideas, etc.

Tweeting (or “Twatting”, as I call it) has replaced the most basic tenets of English and Grammar with abbreviations, half thoughts and the total absence of punctuation. Not to go Old Pappy Johnson on you, but there is a wave of youngins who will spend 70% of their total writing time constructing sexy text messages and short updates about taking a “Clvland Stmr across their bfs chst”.

Still - don’t take my word for it. I’m just an idiot. After doing a very small amount of actual research for this post, I found three items from the interwebs that sum it up best.

First, the great Drew Magary of KSK had his fake Rick Reilly Twitter feed shut down last week and promptly went off in R-rated fashion:

But let me tell you something, Twitter. You may have shut us down, but you can’t stop kickass phony Twitter feeds from springing up. And you know why? BECAUSE A PHONY TWITTER FEED IS FIFTY TIMES MORE INTERESTING THAN SOME RANDOM FUCKFACE’S “LEGITIMATE” ACCOUNT. BECAUSE ACTUAL TWITTERING IS GAY.

Consider this the beginning of the end of your little fad, Twitter. You fucked with the wrong man. I’m gonna start a new site that allows users to post updates that are 150 characters long. That’s right. TEN MORE CHARACTERS. And you know what will happen then? YOU WILL BE FUCKED. FUCKED IN THE ASS. AND THEN YOU’LL HAVE TO TWEET TO ALL YOUR RETARD FRIENDS, “HELP, I’M BEING FUCKED IN THE ASS!”

Because let’s face it: Tweeting is nothing more than blogging for children, the elderly, the mentally retarded, and Ashton Kutcher. Someone’s gonna find a way to do what you do better. They might even have the foresight to allow obvious satire. AND THEN YOUR QUIRKY LITTLE UPSTART WON’T BE WORTH JACK SHIT, YOU FUCKS.

I don’t usually swear that much, but the man makes some good points. [Editor's note: Yes, he does. But Ty is trying to wean himself off of naughty words, so let's salute his attempt at personal growth by ignoring this self-serving lie.]

Next, The Times of London recently said that Twitter is only for those ‘with a need to tell people what they are doing all the time.” The money quotes come from real life science-types:

The clinical psychologist Oliver James has his reservations. “Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.”

“We are the most narcissistic age ever,” agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. “Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.”

For Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety and the forthcoming The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Twitter represents “a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive. It’s like when a parent goes into a child’s room to check the child is still breathing. It is a giant baby monitor.”

So, if you feel the need to shout at the world and be heard, start an asinine blog with 15 readers. It’s much easier, and at the very least you’ll be forced to commit and prove that you can write. If you want to just do something even easier than blogging, get a Twitter and tell your friends about your new media skills. Maybe even call a legitimate business and see if you can find a way to help them use Twitter for money. You know, whatever works? Just be honest with yourself and remember- If blogging is the mutated step-child of real writing, then Twitter is the conjoined fetus twin of horse excrement.

I’ll end with an excerpt from a  recent Gawker post on The Times story above:

Always being trivially connected sounds like Twitter’s business model. The company is now worth $230 million, according to its investors. Some narcissistic executive with more wallet than brains will likely pay more than that to take it off their hands. And some day, perhaps Williams, the Twitter CEO, will no longer have to explain what he does for a living. Twittering will seem as natural as drawing breath. By then, we may have even forgotten that there was more to life than constantly proving we’re alive.