It turns out being useless is only one of the many uses of Twitter. Iranians are definitely using it to organize, but the importance it has been given seems a wee bit overblown. It's not merely because it's one of the few channels for information coming out of Iran--the media simply loves talking about Twitter. They were giving it an excessive amount of attention before these events and this is merely confirmation to Rick Sanchez that it is the greatest invention of all time.
The regime's own technological propaganda efforts are lame. See this Photoshopped crowd? Looks like a project I did in week 1 of "Introduction to the Clone Tool." Try to catch up, guys. And stop treating women like shit.
So Twitter is being used for organizing marches against an unjust government. That is genuinely awesome. But what's this crap about it being a news source? I know there isn't much reporting coming out of the place, but reading (or posting) a bunch of unverifiable tweets is lame. Used to be only government officials had their biased, unverifiable statements uncritically parroted by the media--now everyone is invited to submit them via Twitter.
See my previous cartoon on this time-suck/revolutionary tool. And don't forget to follow me on the Twitter!
posted by Matt Bors at
1:00 AM
4 Comments:
I had some people at work in the marketing department (ugggh...marketing department) get me onto Twitter about two years back. I already hated face-space and my-book; seeing them as a 'closed Internet' where information is kept by corporate giants who make money off other peoples' content. (A free account isn't free. Your information is worth money.)
It's an interesting medium. It's owners keep it as a pet project and make money elsewhere, so it's free of ads (but not SPAM). But it is unverifiable (unless you're a famous person who has a verified twitter account) and the fact that it has finally started making it to mainstream news (NPR talked about how 1/3 of congress twitters...or twits or whatever the hell the verb form is) will hopefully ensure a quick yet painful death for the service as the world's limited attention spam jumps to the next great social media outlet (which will then be used as the exclusive news source for the Huffington Post)
/end rant
@sumdog on Twitter
RT @aaronmanton jurnlsts r ded lol
Matt, have you read this piece of fake news from the Borowitz Report?
Ayatollah Warns Iranians: ‘I am Following You All on Twitter'
http://www.borowitzreport.com/article.aspx?ID=7037
No, I hadn't. thanks.
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