It's weird how bloggers, gossip types and "Web 2.0" company founders and execs have developed into this strange pseudo-celebrity sphere, where many of them are constantly stroking each other. What's unfortunate about it is that the podcasts, blogs and other media I've consumed from the tech world are becoming hopelessly out of touch.
I know I've previously blogged about this with regards to Leo Laporte and the This Week in Tech gang's comments about how "nobody uses .NET," but reverse awareness is also getting out of hand. This post from Scoble is one of countless about Twitter, and it's hopelessly out of touch. The comments on the post seem to concur. Twitter has become something of a flagship for attention whoring, especially in that pseudo-celebrity community. Seriously, I'm so tired of hearing about it, about how great it is and it's changing the world.
I'm not generally one to be a poopy pants about new technology, but I agree with the comments about how this thing is a niche feature for something else, not a business. VC's keep sinking money into it, and for what? It feels like 2000 all over again.
And it wouldn't be so damn annoying if it weren't for the constant, "This is our attention whoring party and we're so awesome," kinds of posts and comments. Seriously, take it to your average high school, and they'll be like, "Yeah, I can send text messages, what do I need this for?" Even kids who live for attention don't see the value in this.
The pseudo-celebrities are living unbalanced lives, as far as I'm concerned, which probably contributes to their lack of perspective on Twitter's true impact. I don't think it's an over-generalization to say that most people outside the valley don't feel any need to share when they take a dump to their followers, or know when the followers are taking a dump. There are so many more important things going on at all times, and this constant connection noise is, in my opinion, a waste of time.
Do any of these people turn off the electronic devices and spend time with their kids, pets, a book or a movie or whatever? Is this "knowledge" about what everyone else does really that important?
This was one of the strange, perhaps even low points, of the conference -- there was a huge push for people to use twitter and a mashup of that with location-based services (so you could physically see where people were at all times). In some instances the twitter use was useful - a few sessions took questions and comments from the audience using it ("people on twitter are complaining that we're talking too much about this particular topic, so we're going to move on..."), but overall I felt like the crowd was too engrossed in it.
In some cases it may be completely fucking disrespectful, but I was thankful for it in a few situations - namely when there was a panel of people speaking, and they all got tangled up in their own tangents (while losing many in the audience in the process). My mindset? I've already come to this session, invested enough time that leaving for another would be pointless, and I've seen hints that this group knows what they're talking about and I would love to take some nuggets of knowledge home. To me, their focus on inane banter is completely fucking disrespectful to folks who paid a shit ton of money to listen to them, so I applaud any method that alerts them to this fact. Besides, beats being bored in one's chair twiddling thumbs or surfing the Internet anyways.
Obviously you didn't convince Paula... ;). http://twitter.com/HolidayWorld