This video presents a conundrum to me. It attacks the video game industry, which obviously offends me. But it also attacks the social media industry, which fills me with great exuberance. I’m left torn and conflicted, bouncing back and forth between emotions, trying to figure out what my overall reaction is. This does not happen to me. The Gimcracker exists to bust you upside your head with knowledge. It is always my goal to f*** you up with some truth. If you can name what show I just quoted I will friend request you on Facebook and follow you on Twitter immediately. Sike. Watch this video and tell me your reaction. I’d love to hear what you think about it:

There are a lot of reasons to delete your Facebook account, and I’ve been over a lot of them. But this is the final straw. Get out while you can! Facebook just made all of your stuff public. That’s right, your friends lists, profile pics, fan pages, and network memberships are all public now. I’m so glad I deleted my account permanently (which was rocket science to do, by the way). You should too! If not because it’s a huge waste of time, makes your relationships with some people awkward, and glorifies extroverts and annoying ego-centric people, do it because they are violating your freedom!

Why are they doing it? Twitter. Again, Twitter is the culprit! Twitter has a completely public philosophy, and they are getting lots of traffic because of it. Facebook wants in. That’s right, despite the fact that Facebook has 350 million members and enough monthly bandwidth to generate a treasure chest full of gold and antiquities every second, they still want more money. If everybody’s stuff is public, they can get more traffic, and thus more money. Simple as that. Resistance is not futile! Just delete your account and pick up the damn phone if you want to keep in touch. You don’t even have to call someone – just text ‘em you laggard!

Twitter is a black hole. It is a singularity event. And it has been scientifically proven. I realize the image I made doesn’t make sense because the Twitter bird should be the actual black hole, not being sucked into it. So? Why don’t you go tweet about it.

This study done by Pear Analytics shows that most Twitter Tweets are meaningless and have no pass-along value. In fact, 40.5% of Tweets are classified as “Pointless Babble”, which is what I hate most about Twitter. “I just woke up and it’s raining outside.” Well whoopty-freaking-do. Tweeting something like that means only one of two things (as has been discussed quite frequently at TGM before – lol): 1) you have no real friends to tell, or 2) your ego is so big that you think people actually care.

So how is Twitter a black hole? You’re about to find out.

OK, so that takes care of 40.5% of Tweets that come from Twitter. What makes up the other 60%? According to the study, 37.5% is conversational, which is fine but begs the question, which part of having a conversation with another person merits a public announcement? I’ve never understood the conversational piece of Twitter. Hey Biz Stone, I don’t know if you are aware but a while back they invented some neat things called “instant messaging” and “private message inboxes”.

We’re now up to 77.5%. What’s left? Spam is 3.75% and self-promotion is 5.85%. That takes us to 87%. If you’re on Twitter you’re using a product that is scientifically 87% worthless. I don’t know what you did in life to get to where you are now. I don’t know what choices you made that led up to you creating an account on Twitter. All I can do is guide you back to real life and help you to understand that Twitter is at least 87% bad for you. If I told you the next episode of Mad Men was going to be 8 minutes of episode and 52 minutes of commercials, would you watch it? I guess it depends on how big a fan of Mad Men you are…

Of the remaining 13% of activity on Twitter, the study is not quite clear. It says that 8.7% was deemed to have “pass-along” value, but it does not indicate what comprises of the last 4% or so. The only theory I can come up with is that Twitter itself is such a black hole of filth that it doesn’t even equal up to 100% of itself. By the time you are able to account for all of the individual components of Twitter, a singularity occurs and the thing itself has distorted and shifted into a lesser thing.

The sum of the parts of Twitter is greater than the whole.

-The Gimcracker

But as much as I’d love to just keep making fun of Chad Botcho-Cinco, there is something that I hate even worse, and that is Twitter. You see, Twitter is like Agent Smith from one of those sequels of The Matrix where he infects people by sticking his hand into them and they become a replica. One Agent Smith isn’t so hard to handle, but a thousand of them is a different story. Well Twitter is infecting us and turning us into mindless drones that perpetuate it’s existence. I am the Neo of the world of Twitter. I don’t know why I have been given this extreme responsibility, but I am taking it very seriously and I will not stop until Twitter becomes the Internet equivalent of Creed (it will still have a huge following, but at least the rest of the world will make fun of it relentlessly).

The moral of the story here is that it’s not Peyton Manning or Tony Gonzales that’s wanting to Twitter, it’s the dumbest player in the league. It’s only fitting that he would be the one that wants to use the dumbest service on the web during games. Do you really want to be using the same thing that a guy like Chad Johnson is using?

First of all you may be thinking that I should be happy about the 10 percent of users making up 90 percent of tweets due to my stance on what Twitter should be: a platform for subscribing to interesting/smart/famous people (a small number of total users), instead of for everyone in the world to post pointless tweets. But, the reason this statement is alarming is because the 10 percent should be closer to .10 percent. Think about it, if there are, let’s say, 70 million people on Twitter, 10 percent is 7 million. There aren’t 7 million interesting people on the Earth, let alone on Twitter. .10% of people should be making up 90% of tweets, just like .10% of people should be making up 90% of the music I listen to.

Secondly, the statement about 60 percent of users not returning from one month to the next is very alarming. That means that the majority of users that I come across on Twitter aren’t even there. What’s the use in following them or replying to their tweets if I’m not going to get a response? This number should be closer to 10 percent, not 60. I guess people sign up and then realize that there literally is nothing to do on Twitter.

Finally, here is a segment Conan O’Brien does to bash Twitter. It’s called TwitterTRACKER and it’s hilarious, but it also makes a good case for the argument that Twitter is stupid.

In case you missed my previous Twitter posts I believe Twitter holds value in obtaining quick information on any topic from multiple platforms. That is the only value it holds. Nowhere in that sentence did I say “Twitter holds value in finding out why Jeff thinks he should start going to a different Subway for lunch” because there is absolutely no way anyone could care enough about that to dial-up their modems and log on to Twitter and search for it and read about it.

In case I haven’t beaten this point into the ground enough, here are a few examples:

How Twitter Should Be Used

Woot:
$149.99: iRobot Roomba 535 Robotic Vacuum with Lighthouse Technology http://www.woot.com

ESPN:
proof it’s our Skip RT: @RealSkipBayless Outrageous 6th foul call on DHoward! OK, refs making sure LeBron lives another day. Makes me sick.

Coldplay:
New songs added to Coldplay iPhone Tap Tap game, price reduced until Sunday – http://bit.ly/vn59e

Why I Want To Leave Earth

KendallS24:
Studying at starbucks til 2, running, shower, work til midnight. Ew.

panicxpandemic:
Dyed my hair black. I feel so emo. XD

jessica_shaw:
going to see JONAS BROTHERS THE 3D CONCERT EXPERIENCE! i’ve been waiting about a year for this!

But, according to the video, the latter examples are what Twitter was built for! Why are you being so mean, Gimcrack Miscellany!? Mean! Why! It’s because as Stephen Colbert so eloquently put it, “how can we go further? I know you’ve been on Twitter… but have you been on Nothing? The user interface is so intuitive!” Basically what he’s saying is that Twitter is dumbing down communication to the point of uselessness.

Debunking 7 Points Made By This Video

Point 1: It’s interesting to know what everyone we know is doing at all times, even if it’s just mowing the lawn or cooking dinner.

Counter-point: Actually it is not interesting to me. There, I said it. There are times when it’s ok for someone to be that interested, like when a mother wants to know what her son is up to at college because she misses him. He could call her and tell her each time he blinks and she would love it. But that is not normal. We have public and private lives, and our private lives are private for a reason.

Point 2: Unfortunately, most of our day-to-day lives are hidden from people that care.

Counter-point: No they are not. Have you ever heard of a blog? Or email? Or instant messengers? Or texting? Or free long distance from every single cell phone company? That’s why these things were invented, so that our day-to-day lives would not be hidden from the people that care.

Also, what the creator of this video does not understand is the concept of “people who care”. A random person on the internet does not care about your day-to-day life, thus they are not included in the “people who care” category. Your friend from college might care about your day-to-day life (although unlikely, but I’ll give the benefit of the doubt), in which case you can tell this person “Here is my email address, also here is my phone number and my IM username. There are no boundaries to what you and I can share with each other now. Absolutely no boundaries.”

Point 3: You wouldn’t send an email to a friend to tell them you’re having coffee.

Counter-point: I have sent more than one email to a friend to tell them I’m having coffee. It’s because I’m asking that friend if they want to join me for coffee. In real life. Where we would talk with our mouths. And interact. Nevermind.

Point 4: Meet Carla. She’s addicted to her mobile phone, reads blogs all day, and has contacts all over the world.

Counter-point: I don’t really want to read tweets from someone like Carla who has an addiction to talking and reading blogs instead of working at her job. Adding Twitter to Carla’s life would make her head explode.

Point 5: Within hours she saw a different side to people she chose to follow. She didn’t know that her friend Steven in Seattle was a baseball fan.

Counter-point: If you haven’t gotten to know someone well enough to know one of their favorite hobbies was baseball (not exactly an intimate detail), you must have a problem listening to them when they talk to you in real life. Steven has probably tried to talk to you about baseball and has gotten his feelings hurt when you stopped listening. That’s why Steven moved to Seattle.

Point 6: Carla became a fan of Twitter and started posting updates. Her friends could see her life between blog posts and emails.

Counter-point: One of the reasons I like to get together with friends on the weekends is so I can talk about all the new things that I’ve experienced throughout the week, and listen to what’s been going on with them. This is how the world works and it’s the reason it’s still fun to get together on the weekends even though you may have been doing it for years. If your friend already knows every possible thing you’ve done and thought since you’ve seen them last, what are you going to talk about when you get together on the weekends? I find this type of mentality to actually lead your relationships to be less personal, which is the opposite of the apparent goal.

Point 7: This is exactly 140 characters. Twitter means you do not ever have to read long messages.

Counter-point: Doesn’t that seem like a bad thing? Something inside me feels like that’s a bad thing. I mean it’s sort of good, but it’s bad though I think right? Because it’s too easy. Isn’t reading a good thing to do? I don’t know if this is a counter-point, I just had this instinct that you would be able to create your own counter-point here. Maybe you should Twitter your counter-point and I’ll go check it out. Sike.

It seems like a lot of people, including the creator of this video, are rooting for Twitter to succeed (which it will) and are even pushing for it to succeed. They’re almost audibly cheering for it. Twitter is good for certain things and bad for other things. You know what this argument sort of reminds me of? The Mac vs. PC wars. Everyone’s always adamantly on one side or the other. The whole fanboy/hater thing is getting old. As old as Diane Keaton.

Ashton & Demi are threatening Twitter, or us, or someone, to leave Twitter if it does a TV show. Why? Why are you doing that? I think they are mumbling something about invasion of privacy, being stalked, and intrusion on their personal lives. Do they not know what it is? Do they use it every day and not know what Twitter is?

ASHTON YOU ARE VOLUNTARILY POSTING ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND THINKING EVERY SECOND TO EVERY PERSON AND ASKING THEM TO READ IT. AAAASHTONNNNN!

You seem to be forgetting that in order for people to stalk you and know where you are and what you are doing, you have to tell them. I have found the solution, Ashton. When it comes time for this TV show to be made and whatever that looks like and Twitter and Tweets and all that (ugh), here it is, get ready: don’t tweet your whereabouts. You’re welcome!

Regarding the threatening, you probably think you’re threatening Twitter but that proves once again that you don’t know what Twitter is because it doesn’t care if you’re on it or not because there are other incredibly sophisticated famous people who use it too, plus the most interesting man in the world, plus everyone. So I guess you’re threatening your followers? That makes sense because they have a lot of say in the matter (they don’t have any say). There’s only one other group of people and that’s people who are not your followers, which includes me.

Through my sound logic we have determined you are threatening me. Threatening is abuse. Stop it. Also please continue to write entertaining tweets for us to read. At least you are famous unlike most people on Twitter. Your take on climate change is much better than a boring person’s.

P.S. For the Twitterers: this whole post is @aplusk.

*I still give him props for That 70s Show

I don’t have a Facebook account or a home phone because I happen to be a private person, maybe more so than I should be, but I’m still against filling the world in on where I am and what I’m doing every five minutes. With Twitter the principle is the same, but Twitter’s even worse because it has the added element of people thinking everyone is obsessed with their mundane lives (this is called “bragging”, and by the way I hate when bloggers do it, too).

One rule of thumb in life is to measure seven times and cut once. That really applies to writing things down, whether it be an angry email, a drunk Facebook wall post, or an idiotic tweet on Twitter. Why incriminate yourself? You can’t delete an angry, emotional email out of a recipient’s inbox. And starting now, you can’t delete an incriminating tweet from your Twitter account, thanks to a new blog I found called Things You Should Not Twitter.

This blog is pretty much everything I’ve always wanted to create except I was too dumb to think of it myself. For goodness sake, I’ve been keeping my own blog alive recently solely with anti-Twitter posts. Why didn’t I think of this???

I’m pretty sure the person who created this blog is just as anti-Twitter as I am, as he writes: “…I am proud to say this website is powered by Tumblr and is in no way associated with Twitter…” Way to go, Matthew! You’re on the losing side of the battle, but it’s the right side!

*UPDATE* It looks like the Things You Should Not Twitter site is experiencing some technical difficulty. I’ll post another update when I find out what happened with this site.

I don’t know where the idea came from that regular people are not doing this stuff. Oh yes I do, it came from the most un-regular person on the planet: Ashton Kutcher. What does he know about regular people? I bet when he speaks of the “news”, he’s referring to Hollywood gossip. *sigh*

This blog gets what I’m talking about. I’m glad other much better writers/thinkers out there are beginning to agree with me. It makes me look a little less like the crazy old man who lives in the hills and shouts gibberish.

There is a way to use Twitter legitimately. It’s actually the reason Twitter was built and how it was meant to be used, even if the founders of Twitter don’t know it. It is illustrated in the image after the jump.

(Thanks, Contrast)

In case you didn’t get that:

Step 1: Do not tweet
Step 2: Find people who have interesting things to say
Step 3: Follow those people
Step 4. Do not tweet
Step 5. Do not ever tweet

I’m not saying you’re not allowed to use Twitter in any way you want to – you can do whatever you want. You don’t have to listen to me because I’m not the boss of you. I’m just pointing out that you may be full of yourself. If you enjoy using Twitter the wrong way, I don’t expect you to stop just for me. I also don’t expect criminals to stop stealing things, as long as they’re fine with being called criminals.