To Tweet or not to Tweet?

The other day, my dad and I were watching the news (CNN possibly), and at the end of the broadcast, the [male] anchor (in a move that is becoming more common and less likely to evoke giggles) said, "Be sure to follow the rest of the story on Twitter as it evolves." My dad (who talks to the t.v. quite a lot) offered the following bit of wisdom: "No grown man should have anything to do with anything involving the word "twitter." I concurred, as I always do with dad's edicts. Issues of manhood as they relate to digital status updates aside, however, the incident got me thinking further about my own attitudes toward various digital media.

Twitter has become a topic that has woven itself in and out of discussions in my multimedia writing class--I may, unintentionally, have poisoned the class's attitude toward microblogging in showing everyone the "Trouble with Twitter" video--perhaps, though, there are a few closet tweeters in the bunch who will (I hope) prevail and continue to microblog. I say go for it--it's all good.

Anyway, I started wondering just why it is that I am so sure I will never use Twitter, and I came up with an answer--my life is simply too boring (not in a bad way--just not in a way that is worthy of updates that make me look as though I am breathlessly sprinting from one adventure to the next). Blogger blogging has much more to do with what I am thinking than what I am doing, and therein lies the issue. Twitter's prompt, which one cannot escape, is "What are you doing?"

And, really, even in face to face conversation, I hate it when people ask me, "So, what are you doing?" as if they are waiting for me to say something like, "Well, my first novel sold really well, I just got back from a safari, and I'm really big in Japan. (I have a dear friend who hates that question even more than I do, and her stock response is "Whatever the hell I want to.")

If I were an avid tweeter, here is what an average morning's tweet's would probably look like:

8:30--enjoying Cheerios with a banana
9:33--trying to find a matching pair of socks
10:02--giving up on finding a matching pair of socks and who cares anyway because they're all either navy or black and my shoes will cover them up
10:46--getting ready to go to Lamar

I think you see the problem...

But--what if Twitter's prompt were "What are you thinking?" Such might be the beginning of a fantastic tool for low stakes freewriting that would allow students/writers to update their thoughts (from their cell phones, keyboards, etc.--from anywhere at any time), preserve them, and come back to them later on in the quest to construct an essay from their piecemeal observations. Plus, their classmates would be more likely to "tweet" back and create some really interesting cross referencing discourse. Here's the bottom line--I am planning to pervert Twitter for my own purposes and use it in the service of prewriting.