There's a person I'm connected with on Twitter - you could say this person has an impestuous temperament. But my Twitter timeline is always livened up by what they have to say. Today this person, among all the other random 140 character pronouncements, made a declaration.
"I've just had an epiphany. There is no God."
"That's pretty heavy," I responded.
"I know, right?"
This exhange got me thinking. It was pretty strange to share such a moment with this person in such a way, and it shows how the world is changing. Before the dawn of social networking, such an epiphany would have been an intensely personal and private life changing moment. Now such an utterence is lost among the flow of updates that are announced to the world on a semi-regular basis.
"Went to the shops"
"Fed the cat"
"Rejected the concept of a Universal Creator"
"Listened to the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album (it's kicking!)"
"Jim's behaving like a right idiot at the minute"
etc
etc
The question I asked myself is, are we trivialising such moments by letting them escape in the flow of updates, statuses and random musings? Have they become banal because of this?
I decided the answer was no. Why? Because the way these moments come and go is a reflection of the way life is really lived. We have these thoughts. We make these decisions, and then we do something else. Whatever thoughts go through our mind, and whatever happens, when these moments have gone, we carry on. We just get on with it.
Why?
Because there's nothing else we can do.
"Remember life is strange
And life keeps getting stranger every day."
Procession, New Order
Twitter is still rejected by me. I can't go that shallow, Mr. Parker...I think you know this.
ReplyDeleteIt forces you to be concise. That's not the same as shallow.
DeleteI'm not a twit, er...
ReplyDeleteBack.in the early days on Multiply I'd blog on pretty much anything that I was thinking about - including fog in Delhi or some actress' dimwitted comment on something. These days I prefer to write about stuff I think is worth having something to say.
Thing is observations on the fog in Delhi or an actresses dimwitted comment can still be thought provoking. It's not what you say it's the way that you say it and all that.
Delete