Istopped watching Jack Cafferty and Don Lemon, and most of the other anchors on CNN, when they started reading Twitter comments about the issues as part of their news presentation.
There you’d have Jack or Don talking about a serious matter, like the nomination of a Supreme Court justice, and then they’d say, “And here’s what some of you had to say about this nominee on Twitter.”
What followed was an illustration of what happens when you give political oddballs a national soapbox, or when someone who’s IQ challenged to begin with drinks a bunch of beer and then does the social network version of drunk dialing.
“I think this just shows what happens when we elect a Marxist/ Socialist/Communist to the White House.”
I think that one came from right wing, New Jersey columnist and political goofball Gordon Bishop, but maybe not. It might have come from someone sucking down the last of a 12-pack of tallboys in a trailer park in West Texas.
Or…
“I have it on good authority that this nominee was involved in the JFK assassination, before she was abducted by aliens.”
You get the picture.
Whenever they’d start reading those Twitter comments, I’d have a flashback to the days when my dad had a CB radio in his pickup, and we’d have to listen to the truckers talking to each other on long road trips. They say whiskey kills brain cells, but I know for a fact that a gallon of Jack Daniel’s won’t kill as many brain cells as listening to a CB radio for an hour. After listening to the CB for as little as 10 minutes, I had the urge to start picking my teeth with my pocketknife.
Same with Twitter, as far as I can tell. I know I’ll hear from readers who want to tell me how important these social networking sites are in a crisis, like what happened in Iran when the government was murdering protesters. But 99 percent of the time, these Twitter postings would make more sense if they were written by actual monkeys randomly poking keys on their computer keyboards.
Needless to say, I don’t Twitter and I’ve never Tweeted, and I don’t completely trust anyone who does.
I do have a Facebook page, however, and I’m getting kind of a kick out of it.
I resisted getting a Facebook or MySpace page with the same determination with which I’ve resisted getting an iPhone for a long time (when cell phone companies make fun of people whose phones are only good for getting calls, they’re talking about me).
But earlier this year, a colleague hounded me into setting up my own page so we could play some abomination called FarmVille together. She assured me that lots of my friends were playing, so I finally, and very reluctantly, agreed.
I set up my page, found a photo that didn’t make me look like too much of a dork, asked a bunch of people to be my friends (I thought most of us already were) and clicked on FarmVille.
About 30 seconds later, I realized it was a colossal waste of time, and clicked out, vowing never to return. But that didn’t stop all the other FarmVille members of my acquaintance from giving me “gifts” and asking for gifts in return. For example, a message might tell me that Selma Alabama had given me a goat for my farm and asking that I send her some cucumber seeds in return.
I hate goats, and frankly didn’t know what she was talking about, so I ignored the messages.
But the next time I checked my Facebook page, I had 23 gifts and 135 requests from people who wanted gifts.
The messages would say something like, “Here is a Weathered Board for your farm in FarmVille. I need Aged Bricks, if you’ve got ’em.”
Or…
“I’m collecting Spring Eggs in FarmVille. Could you help by sending me one?”
Or…
“Here’s a Gold Bar for your farm in FarmVille. Could you help me by sending a gift back?”
Not only were dozens of people giving me things I didn’t want, and asking for things I didn’t have, every time one of them sent me something or asked me for something, the request would pop up on my home page and clutter everything up.
I felt trapped, like I’d slipped on the sidewalk and fallen into the seventh circle of hell.
A kind friend finally told me how to hide all that FarmVille nonsense, and any other nonsense that so-called friends were bombardingmewith, but that didn’t stop the gifts, and requests for gifts, and other requests from coming. This morning, when I checked my page, I had 72 requests waiting.
I’m sorry to tell you, “friends,” but if you’re waiting for me to send you a blanket for your farm, use the Ton O’Manure you sent me as a gift, sign up with MafiaWars, or play Bejeweled Blitz — whatever that is — the wait will be longer than the wait for someone to say something meaningful on Twitter, as read by Don Lemon or Jack Cafferty.
That’s not to say I’m closing down my Facebook page, however. As I said, there are aspects to social networking that I like. Now that I’ve figured out how to hide the garbage, the site is a good way to keep up with friends, share photos (except for the one of me in my underwear that my son posted on his page as a joke), and keep up with issues that I think are important.
I’ve even connected with several of my Bean relatives in different parts of the country whom I’ve never met and didn’t even know existed. You can tell we’re from the same gene pool by the ears. We Beans have earlobes so huge that some of our lobes hang nearly to our shoulders (an unfortunate circumstance for the women, many of whom have pierced ears and wear large earrings that call attention to their mutations).
So far, none of these big-eared relatives have asked me for a gift.
Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].