Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Beat the Tweet

Matt Labash, one of my favorite writers and author of some of the best long-form journalism of the last few years, takes some words -- more than 8,000 of them -- to denounce the micro-blog Twitter.

Labash does more than offer the standard list of deficiencies of a Twitter-heavy culture, such as the immediate expression of the shallowest thoughts or responses, its corrosive effects on language and so on. He checked out the Twitter-drenched SXSW music, film and cultural festival at Austin and highlighted how easily the ability to instantly and constantly interact with a cyberspace community becomes the need to do so, and how that tendency damages interaction with a present physical community.

My own feelings can be summed up in far less than 8,000 words: Twitter stinks. Does my economy vs. Labash's prodigality mean I am a better writer than he? In no way. He got paid for his words and I received only the warm feeling one gets from a completion of an act in the creative process. I leave to you the determination of which pays the bills.

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