The GGA Project -- Day #79 "@monkeygal2"

For a long time now, I've been saying that Twitter was my line in the sand.  The end of the rope.  The last straw. The thing that would rob from me the last of my sanity.  That's probably why I found this Twitterific take on the melodramatic trailer for The Social Network so hilarious:

But the road I'm a'traveling along for this project is a long one, and I'm sure it will lead me onto mini-paths I never would have considered ambling down before.  Nothing dangerous or ill-advised of course (though I'm sure Twitter qualifies as "ill-advised" for a good many people), but I am surely destined to participate in scores of activities I never would have considered before.  In fact, that's THE WHOLE POINT of the project!


So on that note, I will make no apologies for this fiasco, for


Today's New Activity: Tweeting My First Tweets


Early adopters have long garnered mad props.  They are the first on the scene, the in crowd, the trailblazers.  They sniff out the cool and lead you to it like the scouting ants to the sticky spoils.  On the other end of the spectrum, I recently read an article in Details about the merits of being a "first dropper," the person to abandon a fad while some are just barely catching on.


That's all good--both of those trend-setters have their place in the grand scheme.  But I've decided to carve out my niche as a Dorky Late-Adopter Who Never Drops, If Ever (*notable exception: Farmville).  Yes.  That's my scene.


Which brings me to Twitter.  I don't know how people who have resisted Facebook handle the constant mentions of it in every corner.  They must feel like the rest of the world has gone insane and they are just barely keeping it all together for the rest of us.  I think Twitter is far less ever-present than Facebook, and still I've been similarly annoyed/curious/annoyed by all the buzz about "tweets," a word I think is just beyond stupid.  Celebrities especially just can't seem to shut up about how they're tweeting all the time.  Ugh.  It's even worse as a verb!


But whatever you wanna call it, I don't really think the Twitter phenomenon is going away any time soon.  And I think that today, finally, I got a little bit of "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" flowing through me.


I chose the super original @monkeygal2 as my handle, or username, or whatever you call it, and set about to find some people to follow.  The thing is, Twitter doesn't make that part real easy.  It allows you to access your email contacts, but who really has the most up-to-date contact information there?  How many people even use email that much anymore?  Why can't Twitter access Facebook contacts?  Maybe because there is NO NEED for *both* Facebook and Twitter, but no matter.  I harvested the few contacts available through e-mail and went from there.


So this post had to happen a little later than usual, just so I'd have some time to actually use the app before being able to comment.  


I didn't have enough time/attention even available to keep up with my friend Nessa, a master Tweeter.  I remember her rapid-fire tweeting during lunch when we worked together like 2 years ago.  And at this moment, she's authored 11,058 tweets.  Good lord!  Her musings, combined with those of my friend Liz managed to keep me busy reading off and on all day.


But beyond that--so far--there isn't a whole lot to say.  I still don't have any burning desire to share all day long in 140 characters or fewer.  But it is more fun than I expected to have this running buzz in my ear all day long--the buzz of people commenting on everything and the whatnot.  It's potentially very annoying as well, and probably bad for me in some unforeseeable way (at the very least, it's just one more distraction at the gym, now that I'm using my iPhone for music while I'm there).


One thing that I've heard people say in defense of Twitter has turned out to be true for me, though.  It does plug you into your friends' lives in a different kind of way.  I get to know details I never would have been privy to before, especially now that I've moved a little ways from them and no longer work with any of them.  Some people find the thought of knowing such details nauseating, but then I'd just say Twitter isn't for them.  I can filter the junk out and enjoy what's left.  Based on today's tweets alone (still hating the word...it hasn't gotten any better through repetition), I had ideas for several more GGA playdates, just because I got to know things about what my friends were into/thinking about that I didn't know about previously.  I think that's pretty cool.


Now I must excuse myself because I have some tweeting to do.  Hahaha.  And as I end this, I see that Nessa is now, quite seriously, up to 11,060.  Here's hoping they've found a cure for carpel tunnel syndrome by the time she hits 30  :P