1. You get wrinkles (Yuck!)
2. Your hair goes gray or falls out (Icky!)
3. The world around you slowly-but-definitely turns into something you neither recognize nor approve of nor have the time, energy or desire to try to understand - a strange, throbbing abomination ruled (at least culturally) by a younger generation that seems to you morally bankrupt and dismissive of its elders. It is as if the very ground you walk on slowly tilts downward, shifting incrementally over time from a very slight decline into a difficult-to-manage slope that at any moment could (and inevitably will) become a freefall from existence, as if time knows life's nature and seeks to expel you from a world that is no longer yours.
In no particular order. Going bald is probably the worst. Sunburns on the top of your head? Ouch!
I am 24, and I already find myself waging an internal war against the dickish old fogey that I know is lurking somewhere inside me, overmatched and largely-dormant for now, only occasionally rearing his liver-spotted head to curtly dismiss a new fad or ask some teenagers a series of inane questions about how XBox Live works, slipping in anecdotes about how he played paleolithic online games like NFL 2K1 on the Sega Dreamcast using a 50-foot phone cord to take advantage of its 56k connection and dealing with the 2-second lag between flicking his finger and seeing Marshall Faulk execute the move on the screen. But just about the time the kids are resolving to egg his/my birdfeeder later that night, I overpower him and right the ship by showing them a viral video. Still, his occasional appearances remind me he's always there, reading Harper's and whittling, biding his time, and that the balance of power is always shifting in his direction, and eventually he'll be all that's left. Until he/we are dead.
And that is why I recently joined Twitter. Because truth be told, my old fogey and I have always thought it was pretty dumb. "But isn't Twitter just a glorified facebook status update?," we'd ask/declare. And the young people would just scoff, the little pricks, the way we did years ago when people wondered how facebook (back when it was "thefacebook.com," dagblastit) was any different than myspace. Or the way we heard people reacted to the notion of myspace with an incredulous laugh, saying "We don't need a website to tell us who our friends are! And we can keep track of them just fine with email, thanks!" Or the way we heard people say that people said people reacted to email, objecting to how impersonal it all was, saying that they much prefer to write letters, if it's all the same to you. All the way back to "No sentences. We rape." And further!
So, while I still can, before my inclinations crystallize into an insurmountable Great Wall of Codgerdom, I have decided to give Twitter a shot. And I have to admit, just from my first impression I can tell that it is not just like a facebook status update. It is different enough to justify its existence. If you don't believe me, ask me how on facebook or something and I'll tell you, you old bastard.
I'm not quite off the ground floor yet. As this blog has made it abundantly clear, I can't really be bothered to do much in the way of self-promotion or networking. And I haven't felt the need to follow anyone yet. I'm looking at it as a beta version, so I can work out all the kinks and "I just farted LOL"s before I actually have any followers. All of this means that I look like the loneliest bastard in the illustrious lonely bastard history of the internet. So no one was around to read 140-character nuggets like these:
Or so I thought. Check it out!
This guy digs what I'm laying down. The first thing you might notice about this fellow is that he is posing in front of the American flag. Or maybe you'll notice the cowboy hat. Or maybe you went straight for the words and you saw that he considers Barack Obama "the biggest Racist (CAPITAL R!) of all." Whatever the case, I hope you're with me when I say that my first impression of this gentleman is that he appears to be something of a dick. Here's his page: 
I love my new friend. Reasons: - Fighter jet tiled wallpaper!
-"Regan (sic) Conservative"
(Simple mnemonic device for spelling "Reagan":
Republicans
Everywhere
Are
Great
At
Notbeingabletospellthelastnameofthepatronsaintoftheirdouchebagparty. Try it!)
-"Supports Isreal (sic)"
(Simple mnemonic device for spelling "Israel": A before E, except after drinking paint.)
-"Ok i'm a Redneck"
(You are the world's foremost redneck. The Greek God of Rednecks. Your neck is burgundy.)
- Forwards messages like "Is this the smoking gun of Obama's Kenyan Birth?"
(Simple Answer: No. Longer Answer: Nope.)
- Fighter jet tiled wallpaper!!!
I think there is a strong chance that this guy added me because I facetiously said "I blame Obama" in one of my tweets (ugh), and he did a search for tweets containing the words "blame" and "Obama" together or something (maybe even the exact phrase "I blame Obama"), choosing indiscriminately to follow the writers of each hit he got. Maybe he even has some program rigged up to automatically follow people whose tweets meet his deranged criteria. I have no idea if that is even possible, because I am old. At any rate, I doubt he found me by searching for "This American Life." Though "Crunchwrap Supreme" is a possibility.
I thought it would be funny to start writing tweets like these until he deleted me:
But I'm an impatient man, so then I just blocked him. And now I have no friends again. But maybe the lesson here is that there are more important things than being popular. Like not being stupid. On that, my fogey and I can agree.
No comments:
Post a Comment