Sunday, April 28, 2013
The Twitter Lottery
Like anyone who eschews twitter I have been mystified by it. What could be of interest that is merely a sentence long? The answer, of course, is nothing. Wait, no, the key here is that the answer is not "Nothing". The answer is just incredibly close to "Nothing". Once you get into that lottery-like territory it all falls into place. Twitter is roughly like spending 7 seconds of your time on a one in 275,000 chance of enlightenment. Understood this way twitter becomes no different than all its relatives; lottery, channel surfing, slot machines, surfing the internet. One plops their nickels in, their 5 seconds of attention, their puny effort of a mouse click, and who knows, something extraordinary, something exciting, illuminating or visionary could, technically, happen. I mean, statistically it does, every 40,000 (or whatever) times you do it. Because we humans are so wretched at calculating the real meaning of astronomical odds we continue to persevere on the basis of our deranged hope. After all, it does pay off sometimes. You found this.
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If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.
I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!
One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.