Twitter is like Star Trek

More specifically, Twitter is like episode 15 of the original Star Trek series.

In this episode, entitled Shore Leave, the crew encounters strange goings-on on a planet in the Omicron Delta system. They encounter a large white rabbit in a great hurry, an old classmate, a medieval knight, and a katana-wielding samurai.

Turns out the planet is a giant amusement park which creates its attractions on-the-fly, based on the thoughts and memories and expectations of its visitors.

McCoy was thinking about Alice in Wonderland (paging Dr. Freud), Sulu was still mentally weilding a foil from epidode 4 The Naked Time, and tight-ass Kirk just can’t let go of schoolyard rivalries.

They all got back what was in their own minds and hearts.

Twitter is like that. Sort of.

If you think Twitter is going to suck, then most assuredly it will suck.

If you think Twitter is an exciting opportunity to be ignored by celebrities, then you will be excited. And ignored.

If you think Twitter can provide an easy-to-use platform for a network of like-minded individuals to casually share tips, links, and other of-the-moment factoids, then that is how you will perceive it, and that is how you will use it.

The genius of Twitter is that it’s only as interesting as you make it.

Kinda like life.

I suppose it bears mentioning here, that since my “Open Letter to my Tweeps” post of less than a week ago, forswearing all things Twitter, I’ve done a terrible job of living up to my own pronouncements.  I think the longest I went was two days.

I admit defeat.

Twitter, I don’t know how to quit you. You complete me.

I’m going to try to keep the blog going though, I do enjoy speaking in complete sentences and exploring larger than tweet-sized ideas…

Not that I have any right now, mind you.

I know how I said I was quitting Twitter and everything. How above it I’ve become. How more enlightened I am for my tweetlessness. How the days are now just FILLED with real rewarding, productive activities.

Ya. Kinda. Or not.

Anyway, even in the throes of my Twitter withdrawl, I would still find myself back there, from time to time. Just, you know, checking on my account.  Dust off my avatar.  Maybe read some of the collected wisdom of the hive mind.  Follow some links to some WordPress themes, or whatever.

Two days ago, while the ink was still wet on my leaving-Twitter manifesto, I tweeted something. I had to. It was too good. Or too perfect for the “Sounds Dirty But Isn’t” (#sdbi) mini-meme.  It went something like this:

Sounds Dirty But Isn’t: “Nudibranch” #sdbi http://bit.ly/eW4ch (Sorry, I’m not really back, just couldn’t resist that one) B-)

Complete with its own apology no less.  Will this be my final “official” tweet? (I’m not counting the blog post auto-tweets.) Will my resolve to say everything with much longer sentences hold steady against the urge to quip and run?

Today I almost fell off the wagon again… My friend Mary (@MDuette) was having some fun with the #chickenfilms meme:  “Cluck Fiction” — “Lay It Forward” — “The Empire Quacks Back” (that last one was actually #duckfilms).

Ooh, Ooh, Mr. Kotter, Mr. Kotter, I thought to myself, my figurative arm waving in the air to get the imaginary Gabe Kaplan’s attention. I have one! It’s perfect! And entirely original!  So I almost tweeted:

A Cluckwork Orange #chickenfilms

Not bad, right?  I stand by it, such as it is. And while it may have been original, something made me do a Twitter search, just in case some other genius also thought of it. And sure enough, there were a couple of tweets from just an hour earlier, as well as MANY more from about a week ago, as part of the #oneletteroffmovies meme.

So what have we learned. I dunno. Maybe nothing.  But that’s my story of how I didn’t tweet “A Cluckwork Orange”, mostly because I was chicken…