Twitter!

We are entering into a new age of communication and it is a brave, new world, my friends. I suppose we've been continuously making advances in communication and humankind has always quickly taken to them, for obvious reasons. The desire to communicate with others is innate and important to survival...it fulfills an evolutionary desire to build a network of people in our lives. For primitive men, this network was to cast a wide net for women with which to have sex. And this, an adapted search for sex, quickly follows new advancements in communication. Just look at the last 100 years or so. First we had the radio come along and revolutionize communication by using airwaves. And it was barely two weeks after the first practical usage that women started speaking provocatively into a conveniently phallus-shaped device called a microphone, or "dickey," as they called it in the nascent days of the industry. After radio usage became common, what followed was what we can in all practicality call "radio sex," best represented by the the after-hours, 30's era show "Dames with great gams talking fast." Though not often reported today, it's true that FDR's "fireside chats" would often open with a two-minute teaser for this show, creating a titillated audience lead-in for the president (who, of course, could feel no titillation at all. As an side, some have said his polio was faked, used as an excuse to get out of having sex with Eleanor, when after the age of 25 she started to look like a scary dude. Family members have refuted this charge). Next, after the radio came the telephone, which quickly lead to phone sex and men paying several dollars per minute to talk to a silkily-voiced lady who in reality probably looked like this. TV led to graphic images like this, even during the "safe hours." Then email, which quickly lead to cybersex, and now texting, which has led young people apparently to "sexting."

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have Twitter. I don't know to what extent its developers hope or care that it's used to gratify sexual urges, but they sure could have given it a less suggestive name if this was a concern of theirs. "Twitter" has long been used as a euphemism for sex, first found as such in a letter from President James Buchannan to his suspected partner William Rufus King, "And whenst thou were twittering on me last night it was such that I was almost enjoying having you 'override' my 'veto.' Shall we head to Dupont Circle this evening?"

Twitter is the latest and greatest of ways to have one person share stupid and random thoughts with a large group of people. This was preceded by the also dumb "blog" (you suckers!) and has been called "microblogging." In 140 characters or less the twitterer sends out a "tweet" and people who have chosen to follow this person's tweets have this message sent to either their email inbox, or in the case of the ultra cool, to their cell phones. Who are the people participating in this? Why would people want this? Do we want to know those innermost thoughts...these brain spurts? Is this immediacy in communication so important? Even the president's would probably be pretty boring:

5:45am "Just getting up...busy day....looking at Michelle still sleeping in bed. Sigh...I so could have had a white woman."

6:20am "Forcing CEOs of the f'ing Big 3 to resign! I am master of the universe."

6:35am "Feeling bad...kids just asked for help on homework but I don't know what to say with no teleprompter nearby."

9:35am "Joe B has called 12 times and it's not even 10am. WTF was I thinking...would have skated through with Hitler as veep."

10:45am "Mainstream media heads just called...asking how I next want to be glowingly portrayed."

And so forth....