Tag: Social Media

The Retort: A Fading Art Form

Even though I spend most of my time running a losing race with technology, I love it.  I look at kids phone-thumbing their way across the virtual universe and think “What a wonderful time to be alive!”  However, like most people my age, I’m already nostalgic for some of the finer points of the old world that technology is destroying.  First among equals on that list is the retort, that verbal slap that says: “Throw down!  ‘Cause this conversation just got serious.”  It’s impossible to retort electronically.  First of all, there’s too much lag time.  The retort has to be on the fly, swift, offhanded and sharp as a rapier’s thrust.  Secondly, there’s way too much nicey-nice in the digital world; too many LOLs and those sucky little emoticons.  The best you’ve got to be demonstrative with is the cap lock key, and that’s just sorry.  Finally, the retort has to be face to face; half of its power is delivery, half is tone and the other half is the nanosecond of recognition in the other person’s eyes that says “Gotcha!”

It’s really too bad the retort is fading from our world; however, I’ve collected a few to save them for posterity (like memorized books a la Fahrenheit 451) in the hope that, one day, the retort will be resurrected for general use.

I’d agree with you if you were right.

We can’t have a battle of wits; you’re an unarmed man.

If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?

That argument is an encyclopedia of misinformation.

If you’re trying to be a smart ass you only got the second half right.

Obviously, the only thing on your mind is a hat.

I could drive a truck through that argument and never hit the truth.

You’re not the village idiot; you’re his apprentice.

There are only three things wrong with that argument: the beginning, the middle and the end.

If thought were a symphony orchestra, you’d be playing the bagpipes.

I could make a better argument out of Alphabet Soup.

What did you study in school?  Recess?

Ideas that are that stupid should be put in solitary confinement.

That isn’t a painting; it’s paint.

That idea is about as bright as Cassiopeia on a cloudy night.

If stupid was an Olympic event, you’d be in the medal round.

Pinterest: A New Kid on the Block

As the Age of Ego reaches ever more dizzying heights, you would think there were enough Social Media sites out there to last us through the next millennium – but apparently not.  Besides Facebook, Google +, Tumblr, etc. etc. etc., there’s a new kid on the block.  It’s called Pinterest and he’s a tough guy.  How tough?  Here are some numbers (and you can read the whole story here.)  Nearly 70% of Pinterest users are female, over ⅓ have an income of $100,000.00 or more and the largest demographic is between 25 and 34.  Not only that, but Pinterest received 17.8 million unique hits in the month (month!) of February alone.  These are stats you can conjure with.  In fact, if you’re a 21st century Mad Man, you’ve probably fainted by now.

As of this moment, Pinterest is sweeping the virtual neighbourhood on the back of a very simple idea – a picture’s worth a thousand words.  Forgot all the “bringing people together” blah, blah, blah; the premise of Pinterest is, like that of all social media, there are a pile of people out there who think they’re absolutely fascinating, and they want everybody to know it.   What makes Pinterest different — and this is the telling bit — is nobody has to work at it.   The entire site is made up of pictures that people have posted.  It doesn’t matter whose picture it is nor of what, nor even where they got it.  It just has to be an image.  Other people get to comment (which usually amounts to “Cool”, “Awesome”, “Amazing” or “Great Picture”) and/or re-post it.  That’s it!

Actually, if you’re old enough, it’s quite easy to explain Pinterest’s wild success.  Way back in the dinosaur days, when corporate offices were run by suits and secretaries,  paper copies of grainy grey humorous pictures, sayings, cartoons and mild porno were circulated around the business world through the extracurricular use of copiers and fax machines.  This workplace folk art was everywhere.  It was passed hand to hand, snail-mailed, tacked on bulletin boards or office doors and taped to reception desks.  However, once email became the ubiquitous tool of industry, it physically disappeared.  Not quite!  Actually it was secretly living on in corporate email accounts and hard drives around the world.  Pinterest has just let it go public again.

I’m not bad-mouthing Pinterest; it’s totally cool.  For one thing, unlike YouTube, it’s simple; anybody can do it.  There’s no uber-personal interaction as with Facebook and Google+, nor any elaborate planning as with LinkedIn.  Basically, it’s spontaneous: you think an image is brilliant, post it, and carry on.  And unlike Twitter, which is an avalanche of banality, once you get through the crap, Pinterest is quite interesting — especially the humour section.

The Age of Ego will run its course, just like the Space Age, the Jazz Age and the Nuclear Age, but I have the feeling social media is culturally infinite.  It’s been going on ever since Cro-Magnon man got bored one night in a cave near Lascaux, France.

The Twitterpatter of Little Tweets

I’m way too old to understand Twitter.  I know what it is – obviously – I don’t live in a cave.  But I have no emotional attachment to it; therefore, I can’t possibly understand it.  It’s always been my experience that you have to care about something before you can figure out how it works.  For example, I don’t care how the microwave works: zap my burrito and I’ll be on my way.  It might be heat; it might be light; for all I know it might be a little guy with a blow torch.  The transformation from frozen to food doesn’t interest me.  Twitter, however, fascinates me.  Unfortunately, I’m not young enough to see it as an intimate part of life.  I grew up with other things that take precedence.  It’s as if I were my own grandfather, trying to understand why everybody is so captivated by the magic box in the living room where grey-tone Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz live.  It’s nice, but I’ve got other things to do.

Twitter is changing the way we live — D’uh!  But, not in that vacant “everybody’s on Facebook” kind of way.  Yes, everybody’s on Facebook, but most of us have figured out that while Facebook works fine as an ego repository, nobody’s going to change the world by clicking the “Like” icon.  Twitter is more than just being connected, putting on the brag and showing everybody our pictures.  It actually makes us communicate.  Not since the Golden Age of letter writing, when the Victorians introduced regular and inexpensive mail service, has there been such an outpouring of social communication.  It’s as if there’s a gigantic cocktail party going on, 24/7, and everyone’s invited.  Of course, as at any cocktail party, there are a bunch of dolts over by the food, talking nonsense, and most of the rest of the room is as dull as my half-heated burrito.  However, interesting people will gravitate to each other (or to the bar) and Twitter lets them do that – on a scale worthy of the pyramids.

A couple of rainy afternoons ago, I wandered through this electronic booze cruise and randomly gleaned (“stole” is such a hard word) some of this good stuff.  The kicker is it only took me a little over an hour and here are just a few of the results.  I’ve changed them slightly from Twitterspeak.

I wish I had two more middle fingers for you.
Deja Moo: Same old bull
I have heels higher than your standards.
I hope when the shark comes, you don’t hear the music.
Are you Voldemort’s child?
Don’t you think if I was wrong, I would know it?
I can only aspire to be the person my dog thinks I am.

I could go on and on.  If Dorothy Parker were alive today, her head would explode.  The entire world is playing Algonquin Hotel, and Twitter is the Round Table.

Yet, even as you read this, people are lamenting the passing of the written word and damning YouTube for filming the eulogy.  They see texting and Twitter as mind-numbing barbarians who are putting Shakespeare’s quill pen legacy to the sword.  However, there are more words being written today than at any other time in human history.  There are more words being read, more conversations taking place and more ideas being exchanged.  Certainly, most of them are crap, but that’s the nature of democracy: everybody gets a voice.  My point is, though, so far, Twitter is not only saving the written word (140 characters at a time) it’s finding its own place in history.  It, along with texting, are reviving the art of written communication that cheap and easy telephones almost destroyed.   Young people all over the world are thumbing away at each other, sitting in schools and at the dinner table looking down at their crotches and laughing.  The wit and wisdom of the 21st century is sitting there — right in their lap.

This is the Twitter revolution that I’m never going to be able to understand.  I think it’s a wonderful, magical thing, but, as Mark Twain would have texted, “Too bad Tweets are wasted on the young.”