Wednesday, February 24, 2010

I'm a regular Benedict Arnold



Get off my back, OK? I know it’s been more than a week since the last time I posted. You think I don’t know that? I know. But I posted every day for a (work) week and I burned out. But I’m back. And I have a secret to tell you.

Some of you in my inner circle may already know, but others may not. I took the plunge. I… Joined… Twitter.



In my defense, when I was hating on Twitter super hard, I did admit that I thought I’d join eventually. I think I finally decided to join because I’m a “writer” and all the other writers/comedy writers I saw on TV wouldn’t shut the fuck up about Twitter. So I threw caution to the wind and I hopped on that fucking bandwagon. And I haven’t looked back.

My thought process ended up being that it was professionally irresponsible for me not to get on Twitter. And that since I don't read the news or any blog other than my own, I should probably get on Twitter and follow the people who matter in this world, like all of the writers and comedians on Chelsea Lately. I already had to stop following Khloe Kardashian because her Tweets got so annoying I actually thought about buying a plane ticket to LA and stabbing her in her sleep. But instead I just stopped following her, so that was easy. It was kind of sad though because before she got SUPER annoying on Twitter I was convinced we would be BFFLs if we ever met.

I wasn’t all in all at once. While making my Twitter name I almost gave up because @SpewingNonsense was taken already. Goddamnit, I told my assistant to trademark that shit. When will that stupid bitch get something right. Oh wait, that’s me. Sometimes I think about how many times I would have fired myself if I was my own assistant. Anyway, the trouble wasn’t over yet. @BradySpewingNonsense was too long and who knows what else I was trying until I finally settled on @SpewNonsense.

So now you know. Follow me. Or don’t. I don’t care.

Recently I got a slew of my cronies to get on Twitter and one of them proceeded to blog about how and why I convinced him to join twitter!

I have recently joined Twitter. Brady did good work on me. I was dead-set against it. Absolutely was never going to be a part of that shit. But like a great judicial mind, she dissented. She planted the seed for this change months ago. Like Harlan, Stevens, Rehnquist, and Scalia before her, she firmly and publicly noted why she thought I was wrong and let it sit with me, marinating in the social forum for a relatively long period of time. Slowly but surely, the concept became acceptable in the social consciousness. She never pushed the idea. She let me figure it out for myself. I noted Adam Schefter and others could be spoon-feeding me quick sports news tidbits. I noted that all of my favorite sports bloggers post interesting and hilarious stuff on there all the time. My perception of it as a glorified Facebook status bar shifted. One of my good friends joined, and I was on within days. Tip of the hat to you, Brady, you cunning rapscallion.


If you think I don’t consider that celebrity status, think again.

But now that I’m on Twitter, I’ve got some complaints. Because there are some VERY easy things that can be fixed on Twitter that some programmer in India needs to get to work on ASAP. I’m kind of retarded when it comes to Twitter so there are probably things I don’t know how to do that are actually really easy to do. Like I just found out how to see when someone else "mentions" you last week. Seriously, I’m Twitter retarded.

My first complaint is the format of your followers list. Make that shit alphabetical, yo. I don’t want people listed in the order they started following me in or the order I started following them in. What am I doing wrong here? And what if I’m mid-tweet and I want to “mention” someone and I can’t find their name? I don't have everyone's fucking Twitter name memorized, that would be ridiculous. I need the Facebook feature where you start typing something in the search bar and names just start popping up. Sometimes this feature is enabled on my phone in my Ubertwitter app, but only sometimes. Stop fucking with my head, Twitter!

And if I want to retweet someone and put in my own commentary before? I have to copy and paste the tweet, close the large space between the person’s name and what they said, add an ampersand and put an RT in front of it? Come on. That’s obnoxious. I'm really important and don't have the time in my day to complete those 5-seconds worth of adjusting. A simple copy-paste should do exactly what I need it to. Is my issue that I’m on Twitter.com instead of Tweetdeck or Tweetie some other Twitter app with a name that's gayer than AIDS?

All suggestions and tutorials are welcome. I've decided against TweetDeck cause I don't want all my shit integrated or whatever. I'm sure I'm just a total moron and everything I complained about has an easy answer that I'm too dumb to figure out.

And now there's Google Buzz too? I just went into that for the first time today. Got lost, gave up. I'm sure I'll be back once people actually start doing shit on it. But from what I can tell it doesn't do anything super cool/new/different. I think one day my head is going to actually spontaneously combust from technology/information overload.

6 comments:

Alan Whickers said...

Dueling shouts-out! Beautiful.

Anonymous said...

@SpewNonsense ((())))

AMerkel said...

"Twitter retarded" = "Twittarded"

(c) Antony Merkel 2010

abby said...

First of all, so glad you caved!

Second of all, you have to download Tweetdeck. Plain old twitter.com Twitter is so archaic. Although, I do believe there is an automatic RT button if you roll over the bottom right hand corner of a particular tweet, no?

Third of all, random interesting fact - us Gardners are actually related to Benedict Arnold. Ask Marty about it. And apparently, we held a "disco birthday party" with a DJ for Julie's 10th birthday in the crypt of a church in London and his tombstone was housed there. True story.

Lastly - let's get Thai soon.

Brady said...

Alan Whickers- love it.

Slenslee- suck it.

MerkAM - amazing.

Abby- I'll think about Tweetdeck. My issue with the retweet button on twitter is that it just places that persons full tweet in your followers' feed. You can't comment on it or anything, which is what I like to do. Usually a word like "hilarious!" or something before, so people know why I'm retweeting.

You just essentially name dropped Benedict Arnold. And it was the most amazing thing I've ever read. I will be sure to get the full details of the lineage from Marty at the next Gardner family event.

ALSO, I'm down for Thai, my next available Weds is March 10th. Shall we put it on the books!?

abby said...

Braids - you make a good point. The best part of RT'ing is to add your little two cents.

And yes I did just name drop Benedict Arnold...and now I am uncontrollably laughing about this and my coworkers are asking what I am laughing about but it won't be as funny if I re-tell this story.

Let's book March 10th. Although I must say, for someone who claims to lay in bed and watch TV all the time you have a pretty full social calendar!!