Enough of the chatter and chitter
Of comedy legends on Twitter!
Their posts are too brief
And replies cause me grief
As a reader, with nary a titter.
-9

Much as I admire Stephen Fry, I’ve just bailed out of his Twitter feed. Two months of tweets on his every movement and waking moment threatened to swamp my fond memories of his novels, autobiography, newspaper columns and TV appearances, and something had to be done. Even his podcast, which contained at least one classic half-hour with his thoughts on Oscar Wilde, appears to lie abandoned now that his attention has moved to this. Watching him tweet in real time when he was famously stuck in a lift feels like a poor substitute for all of that more polished work.

The lack of polish isn’t the problem, though. I love reading spontaneous and half-formed ideas and jokes in blogs, and Twitterers manage some within their 140-character limits. But with those constraints even the wittiest writers end up tweeting sweet nothings. It’s as if the Beatles anthologies were full of complaints from John Lennon about the parking.

Then there are the replies and retweets; following a discussion through those is exhausting unless you’re one of the people involved, which leaves most celebrity feeds as little more than noise. A discussion-board thread or a blog post give a comment context, making it easier to arrive late and see what was going on, but on Twitter a reply is wrapped up in the moment and trapped in the stream. How many people replied to Fry’s lift post? Who knows?

Fry’s not alone, of course—lots of comedians and authors have moved to Twitter in recent months, and I’ve stopped following others today as well. Sorry, guys, love your work, and am happy to consume it in half-hour instalments or over the length of a book or even by occasionally catching up on your blog... but the drip feed of Twitter is prose water torture. From people who once served you drinks.

The same could be said of my own turns of the tap, and I’ve been wondering whether to drop the dripping myself. It’s been fun to try it for a while, but now I remember why I posted there only once after signing up two years ago. And using it as a side-blog means I’m back to the old concern about diluting and diffusing my web presence and archive—those tweets are a reminder of all the blog posts I haven’t written, and they aren’t even archived here.

The worst, though, is that 140-character limit. If it were 160 you could fit limericks into it. But no, it’s haiku or nothing.

Frog leaps in the stream
Current washes him away
The sound of Twitter

31 March 2009 · Net Culture

Added by Rory on 31 March 2009.