Thursday 26 February 2009

Zero Web, Zero Clue

Here's a ZeroWebber (around in the time before Intarnets and Web Any.Version) who makes a living at sending out an email jokes newsletter daily.  He's also personally bigoted, climate change denying, and operates a "help" service in which he basically browbeats people into setting all their apps up the same way he does "because it's the *right* way dammit" and tries to bully them to install only the apps and services that he approves of.  In general, he sounds and acts like the cranky opinionated old guy out of a 70's comedy.

Here are excerpts from the guy's take on Twitter.  Amusing, clueless, and opinionated.  Some people just don't get it:
Twitter is like the very early IRC chats in the early 80's, but with mug shots and a 140 character per message limit.
If you choose to "follow" somebody, then every time they send a message, you see it in your Twitter page.
Some people make it a game similar to FaceBook and try to get as many people as possible to "follow" them. That doesn't mean that all or any of thir followers actually read their posts. If they just focus on collecting followers, chances are that their followers are just as bland and shallow.
Every now and then you have to weed out the people whom YOU follow. That's easy enough to do. A single click and they are gone. The same happens to you. If you don't contribute anything worth reading, people will stop following you.
. . . 
Twitter is a good way to meet people in a very casual way. If somebody turns out to be worth it, you can send them your email address or Skype handle in a private message.
. . .
It is a good idea to limit your time on Twitter, and show up at the same hour when you do go onto Twitter. That way you accumulate friend with the same convenience time zone, instead of having them spread over the whole day.
He then finishes that section with an imperative to "have FUN!"  - How the heck is anyone going to have fun when Papa Smurf here is telling them which way to sit, which way to shit, and which way to go to bed?  And - oh, yeah - he doesn't get FB either.  And yes, he shills for Skype a lot.  If ever there was a demonstration of WWW vs Web 2.0, he's it.  A pre-web anachronism operating in a Web 0.0 way in a Web 2.0 world...

First - IRC in the '80's?  In what version, of what alternate Universe, was that?

Second, Twitter is nothing like IRC, in any fashion whatsoever other than being a messaging service.

"Some people make it a game" to collect friends?  No - some people make it a business to spam.

"Like FaceBook"?  No - just that you're one of those people that don't get it and are prepared to denigrate anything they don't get while pounding their particular pulpit.

Take it to a "whole new level" as he seems to suggest, by going to email or Skype?  Need I say more?  How do I Skype something to 50 of my friends again?  Ah yeah, that would be "not".

And as to "limiting my time on Twitter" who the hell are you, my father?  "Show up the same time"?  Why?  So I can miss the 75% of my friends who are in other timezones?  Answer:  No, and no.  My time on all media is dictated by whom I want to be in touch with, their time zone, and my ability to be there at a mutually convenient time.

It's why I joined all these "facebook thingies", old man - so I can socialise and interact and conduct business without being tied to rather outmoded concepts.  And I say "old man" from the viewpoint of someone born in ZeroWeb days, and now over half a century old.  (Searches frantically for a suitable term.)  Uh, like, get hip to a brand new trip, old feller!

Now to go have a Red Bull and wash the taste of last century out of my system...



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