Thoughts on Twitter

"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."

Does anyone know where the above quote comes from?

This past week while driving from LA to Dallas, I have been listening to podcasts. I know I already wrote about my thoughts on "Security Now," but there is another show that Alvin makes me listen to called, "This Week in Technology (TWIT)." The host will have guests come on to talk about the latest in the tech world. The big thing they talk about these days is Twitter. They all have Twitter accounts and massive amount of followers. They complain that Facebook is no good because it has a 5,000 friend limit. Most of these tech guys have anywhere from 100,000 to 400,000 followers on Twitter.

One of the guests on the show was talking about how Twitter and Facebook is extremely popular because we are all looking for realness/vulnerability in our connections with others. So with Twitter, a person can have a connection with someone they highly admire, like Ashton Kutcher or Britney. Yet, in reality, this connection on Twitter is anything but real and vulnerable. Having 100,000 followers does not make you any less lonely. After hearing about this concept on the podcast, I started thinking of the quote listed above. We are all looking for real connections, that we cling on to whatever substitute that the world provides.

Countless number of people told me that I needed Facebook to talk to my old friends. After being forced on, I reconnected with the three people I haven't talk to in a while and was satisfied. Yes, my old high school friends have "friended" me, but we haven't wrote on each other's walls, we don't e-mail, we haven't talked on the phone. I find Facebook (along with Twitter) to be another electronic invention that makes me feel guilty because I neglect it.

Can anyone say that our friendship is more real because of all the new technologies?

Let me know what you think. You can reach me by e-mail, cell phone, land line, snail mail, Twitter, Facebook, Friendster, Classmates.com, AIM, Skype, or blog.