20090313

The Problem with Microblogging...

The problem with microblogging is that it is entirely unnatural to refer to yourself in the third person. Twitter, Facebook, etc basically ask the same question (What are you doing right now? What's on your mind? etc.)

The problem arises from the fact that the microblogging services jam your username at the front of the post with no punctuation, leading users to use their username as the first word of the sentence. Myspace used to automatically enter "is" right after the username, but has stopped doing that recently. Facebook used to lead with your first name, while Twitter never even presumed to remind you that the username prefaces all tweets.

I've noticed lots of Twitter users just typing regular sentences or even (*gasp*) starting their sentences with subjective first-person singular pronouns. Mechnoch I do not think that this looks right, personally.

And it wreaks havoc if you tie Twitter and Facebook together. Subjective first-person singular pronouns are far less common on Facebook, and unheard of on Myspace due to the fact that these services (used to) remind the user during posting that their username will lead the post. So what is someone to do if they want their Facebook status to be updated with every tweet? Spend minutes of my valuable time to re-arrange my thoughts into the third person? Tweet in regular sentences, ignoring the fact that my friends on Facebook and Myspace are going to think I'm retarded for not speaking in the third person?

Mechnoch hereby resolves to tweet and update status exclusively in the third-person. In fact, Mechnoch may just start referring to himself in the third person all the time, even if people start saying that Mechnoch is starting to sound like Elmo.

3 comments:

Paul Jones Dayton said...

Mechnoch may start sounding like Bob Dole

Mechnoch said...

Mechnoch does not appreciate your slandering his good name by comparing Mechnoch to Bob Dole.

will said...

allow me to propose what seems to me to be a simple and elegant solution.

when microblogging something you're doing, use the third person format, like so-

mechnoch: is doing something.

when microblogging something you're saying, simply quote yourself, like so-

mechnoch: "i have this thing to tell you."

or

mechnoch: says, "i am saying some things."

it could work, yeah?

ololiu: thinks so.