Glowing faces. Young faces.
Disengaged, young, glowing faces.
There was a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode called “The Game” where the entire crew becomes addicted to a simple video game. Well…almost everyone except for young Wesley Crusher and his girlfriend (one of the few episodes with a tasty young Ashley Judd). As was common for NextGen episodes, in then end, Wesley Crusher saves the day.
Now he’s part of the problem.
Wil Wheaton, who starred as Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation, has over 300,000 followers on Twitter. One of his recent Tweets: “Kings have given up 7 shots on goal in the first 6 minutes of the 1st, and taken 1. Oh boy, it’s going to be a long night.”
Do we really need to be getting color play-by-play from the kid from Stand By Me? (the one who isn’t dead, isn’t one of the Coreys, and isn’t married to Mystik?)
Apparently so, because lately it seems like what’s going on in Wil’s world (and the rest of the Twitterverse) is more exciting than the world that surrounds us. This is what is causing the glowing faces: Twitter, Facebook and the like.
I see it all the time when I’m on stage at Howl at the Moon. At any given moment, it’s likely that at least 1 person at each table is somehow interacting with their phone rather than being engaged in their surroundings. I’ve seen it at nightclubs too…remember that song, “No Parking on the Dance Floor?” I think it really needs to be updated to “No Tweeting on the Dance Floor!”
The under-30 crowd seems to be the worst of the offenders, and in my experience it seems to be slightly skewed towards the women. Twitter has replaced the knitting circle as the preferred way of spreading gossip.
And what is so unique about Twitter that has everyone all aflutter? The concept of public message boards hearkens back to the days of dial-up BBS’s. In fact, BBS stands for Bulleten Board System. They’re digital notes on the fridge, on display for your roommates to see (as well as everyone else) .
And the vast majority of it is the most mundane of mundane of information. I can fully admit I’m narcissistic enough to maintain a blog and I’m fairly active with my Facebook account. Sure, I have a Twitter account…I just rarely use it. My updates are autofeeds from my blog..it’s simply a notification tool I use let people know I’ve created some new content. I guess I just don’t care enough about which flavor of yogurt Wil Wheaton ate for lunch today.
Moreover, it’s practically impossible to follow any threads or conversations on Twitter. Unlike Facebook where you can read whole threads, on Twitter you’re often reading replies to unseen messages…it’s like overhearing half of an annoying telephone conversation. Yes, I know there are tools that do this for you, but I’ve got better things to do than read through other people’s attempts at publicized witticisms.
When I was in my teens I worked at a summer camp in North Carolina. The owner had a rule banning headphones (whether plugged into a CD player, cassette player, radio…whatever). Why? Because they were anti-social. When you have headphones on, you’re isolated from the world around you.
I find it very disturbing that the “new social media” is, in many ways, creating the same anti-social behaviors that headphones created. Glowing faces. Disengaged, young, glowing faces.
Start looking around and you’ll see them too. They’re everywhere.
Friday, April 24
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For those that can’t get enough comic tragedy in their life, comes F My Life (as in Fuck My Life!). A co-worker introduced me to the iPhone App (available in the App Store as FMyLife).
