August 8, 2009

Why I don't tweet

Simple -- it would give away my age to the under-25 year-old sugar babies.

Source: "Teens Don't Tweet" (Nielsen Wire).

I recall not long ago when one of my undergrad chick friends left a Facebook status update saying, "what is this twitter all about? i don't get it." All of her friends left similar responses about how pointless it is -- and one may have even mentioned that it was for old people, although I could be imagining that part. Of course, Twitter's pointlessness was not the reason they weren't into it -- hell, they post pointless status updates on Facebook several times a day. But they sensed somehow that it wasn't cool young people doing it, but rather the "mom from Mean Girls" crowd. Young people's social antennae are hyper-sensitive, so don't try to put anything past them.

6 comments:

  1. I think of Twitter as mostly a diversion for urban hispters. Sort of like drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon.

    Peter

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  2. @agnostic, you said...
    "Why I don't tweet... it would give away my age to the under-25 year-old sugar babies."

    You don't have to link up your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Just keep the two things separate.

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  3. Have you done anything so that your facebook account doesn't reveal your age or atleast doesn't highlight the traits of your those in your age group? Have you gone to the extent of not adding people you knew from highschool and college? Also, I've seen you make the claim, most recently on Roissy's blog, that painting and music can work as means to attract girls but not poetry or writing because the latter are too feminine in nature. How does this square with your other posts on dancing ability and baby-facedness, arguably feminine attributes, being useful qualities for attracting girls? Is there something more particular to writing that gives you the impression that it comes across as specifically feminine? A lot of game seems to be about balancing certain abilities females excel in, reading faces, fashion taste, being sociable, and situating them in a more masculine context or directing them to more masculine ends. It seems like there would be room to do this with writing too. After all Roissy seems to have attracted more than a few female readers with the stylistic flourishes in which he embeds his callous (read masculine) disdain for the behavior and tastes of the modern "liberated" woman.

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  4. Yeah, if you search this blog for "facebook game," I went into a little detail on how to hide your true age.

    As for painters and musicians vs. writers and poets, the former are either masculine or androgynous, while the latter tend to be feminized -- too needy and depressed, for example.

    Dancing involves a skill that females are better at, but it's not one of their worse ones like weepiness. Plus dancing ability signals bodily symmetry, and so good genes.

    And when you're confidently showing off in front of a large group, as when you're dancing in a high-up place where people can see you, you give off more of a lead singer vibe (complete with teenage groupies who reach up for you to pull them on stage).

    Writers, by contrast, have a hard time being confident show-offs, except for the more testosterone-driven comedians who verbally beat down other people.

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  5. Thanks for pointing me to the post, I've taken a similarly laconic approach with my profile. Separate question, do you know if there is some dynamic of selection pressure(s) that account for the hotness of East African women? I've been hanging out with a clique of them attending the local college and it's pretty striking how cute and feminine their faces are. At the linke below, Sailer comments that east african female beauty might have to with the mixing of different ethnic groups in the area producing an exotic, unique look, after quoting PJ O'rourke saying that when he was in Mogadishu "practically every young woman looked like a runway model." But the ethnic mixing explanation doesn't really get at the *practically every* qualification that O'rourke includes in conveying his impression, and which jibes with mine, these are 6 random girls with no family connections and all have quite fetching faces.

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  6. i don't tweet, but i do follow a few tweeters. i don't know the tweeters personally actually. i use it b/c i follow certain non-mainstream competitions/tournaments, and it's the fastest way to get word on what the results are.

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