Twits.
Twitter is for twits.
That has been my opinion pretty much ever since I learned several years ago that birds tweeting sweetly in the sky had been joined by twits tweeting, sweetly or not, in cyberspace.
It just seemed like a very lucrative, very bad, idea. I found it hard to believe that our world would be improved by folks, many of whom are incredibly short on impulse control already, suddenly having the opportunity to net any thought, crazy or not, that happened to be flying over their own head, and, in 140 characters or less, release it into the already polluted cyber-atmosphere so it could fly over the rest of us. We already know what pigeons do, given a similar opportunity. I couldn’t imagine Twitter droppings being much more of a blessing. The whole thing seemed likely to lend itself to the usual social media temptations of narcissism and voyeurism but ratcheted up a notch by the ease with which any twit could launch birds.
I know. Social media is here to stay. It is a tool that becomes a blessing or a curse or something in between depending upon the character of the folks using it.
Really healthy well-balanced folks use it to catch up on old friends and classmates and share pics of their kids or grandkids. They occasionally even choose to turn it off for a couple of heartbeats in order to spend a little real time in the real world nurturing real relationships.
Really unhealthy and unbalanced folks use it to escape into an alternate and unreal universe, becoming more unbalanced than they already are. Of course, they almost never turn it off. Seriously, has it been your experience that social media helps unbalanced people become more balanced? I thought not.
But most of us who are pretty normally abnormal and try to confine ourselves to being completely unhinged only on third Wednesdays in months ending in Rs find ourselves somewhere in the middle of the social media continuum.
I read an enjoyable article the other day by a guy who says that for him Twitter has just been a lot of fun. I had just written an article for a magazine, and they wanted my Twitter address to share along with the article. (I did set one up ages ago; I never use it.) I’d also just completed the audio narration for a book on “Proactive Grandfathering” in which the wise granddad/author suggested that grandparents should try to use and be familiar with all the social media that their grandkids use. He had a point.
So I guess I should admit that not everyone who tweets is a twit. And I should also confess that what bothers me most about Twitter in particular and social media in general is the twit under my own hat. I am not short of strongly held opinions. The same skills, such as they are, that I can use to build people up and point to Christ make it much too easy for me to fire a pithy (and poisonous) 140-character shot. And I worry about my character and influence if I too often fall to that temptation.
St. James warned God’s people that the tongue is a fiery instrument. A twit with a finger and no impulse control can set off some pretty serious blazes, too. I probably do a better job honoring my Lord if I choose not to play with matches.
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Copyright 2017 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.
