I really like Twitter. Maybe you knew that…maybe you didn’t (all of my posts related to Twitter are HERE). I’ve heard this about twitter so many times lately:
I don’t care that you walked the dog…or are heading into work…or are eating lunch now…or are sad. I don’t care, and nobody else does! That stuff just doesn’t matter to me. And it’s just a waste of time for me and for those reading it.
Have you heard this, or something like it? Frankly, I’m tired of hearing this from folks. It’s not a great argument. So few people (well…at least the ones that I follow) update about narcissistic and/or self-loathing goings-on that, to say you don‘t buy into Twitter because of those silly updates is like saying:
I can’t stand baseball. All they do is bunt, and that’s so boring.
I don’t like to read because there are so many big words.
I don’t like the Bible because the book of Revelation is so hard to understand!
The problem with this line of arguing is that people are taking a specific instance (that may or may not be true) and making a generalization about the whole. I don’t even see many (if any) twitter updates from actual people (not twitter bots) that say, ‘I’m sad.’ Here are examples of typical Twitter updates (aka, “tweets”)…this is a screenshot from my computer that I took just now:
This is a form of a weak argument called “hasty generalization.” We notice a few examples and quickly jump to broad-stroke conclusions. (HT: John Mark). It’s not an invalid argument…just a weak one. Hasty conclusions are much easier to jump to than justified ones. Not enough of these type of frivolous updates have been observed to warrant throwing Twitter out with the proverbial bathwater.
Baseball isn’t all about the bunt. Very few people, if any, understand every word of Revelation. And not every word in every book is a difficult word.
If you’re opposed to Twitter, fine. But come up with some better excuses for not jumping on board.
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