twenty.

twitter. twitter. tweet. tweet.

everybody's doing it.

everybody except me.

don't get me wrong, i get it.

no really: i get it.

but i just will not sign up to this thing.

i've been online in a major way for damn near 11 years. i've been instant messaging so long that i remember how the random messenger window would pop up on your screen with the words asl?. the days when you couldn't get to the internet without going through a shitty ISP like aol that made you use their software. when your e-mail was tied to said shitty ISP and you used to log in and pray you'd hear the computer lady say 'you've got mail' [actually, it would be kinda ill if gmail did that shit, now i think about it]. so yeah, i'm old and i'm old school.

i'm not opposed to the internet and how it connects people; it's so much a part of my life that i wouldn't dare pass any judgements on social networking of any kind [i hate facebook with a passion, but that's just god's will]. to think of how much myspace has impacted my life is amazing and worrying in equal amounts, but that's just how it is and so i accept it. being aware of my own entanglement with social networking means that my beef with twitter is not that it's stupid, or pointless [although i may have told some friends this in my weaker moments]; my problem with twitter is actually bigger than that.

do you remember when you used to take a picture and you had no idea how it looked? do you remember the feeling of going to the photography store and collecting your pics after they'd been developed? how you'd flip through them looking for that one that you just knew as you posed for it was gonna be hot? and do you remember how you felt when you were right??? and what did you do with that pic? you took it to school to show your friends, and then you brought it home and put it on your bedroom wall.

when i'm taking pics now, not only can i see how it looks immediately [thank you digi cam], i'm also acutely aware of the fact that sharing pics nowadays isn't just about a few friends at school, it's about a few hundred people online. hate it or love it, there are times when a camera points at me and i think 'this would be a great profile pic'. shit, how many of us take pics for the sole purpose of them being profile pics? uh-huh, i know it ain't just me. *side-eye*

and so we come back to twitter. what's my beef burger with it? myspace may want my pictures, but twitter wants my thoughts! and not just the clear, coherent thoughts; twitter wants awl my thoughts. the rambling, unfinished, meaningless, private thoughts as well as the einstein ones. i don't wanna be eating a delicious snack and question whether or not i should share the moment with my followers. i don't wanna brush my teeth at night and then rush to my blackberry to tell my followers goodnight. i don't want a text at 3am from diddy telling me that he's 'LOCKED IN!!!!!!!!!!' or from solange knowles saying that she scratched her butt.

i spent damn near an hour travelling around twitter pages tryna see if i could fall in love with it, and the only page that gave me anything near to joy was phonte's. he's follow-worthy cos he's hilarious, but that tweet-comedy seems rare. looking at the pages of friends was uber-creepy, so creepy that i had to take a shower afterwards and scrub myself down with bleach and ammonia.

now i will say this: twitter gets the average joe closer to their idols than any other site. i also think it will do wonders for networking in ways that LinkedIN can only dream of. for these two reasons alone i doff my cap to the blue bird, pat it on the back and say 'carry on, old chap'.

but still. and yet. and but.

me personally? moi? this woman right here?

my random thoughts are mine, yo. i guess there are some things i'm just not willing to share. tweet tweet that shit all the way up.