Why Twitter is an idol

Just recently I saw a great articles labeled iphone, ipad, idol -  apart from being witty it was pretty much right on.
It got me thinking when on the evening news there was a piece about twitter. If you reflect upon it, twitter is all about me. People tweet their latest irrelevancy, what I am eating, what I am doing this instant, where I am going, who I am meeting, my observation of some item of culture or news or fad or point of view in less than 140 characters.

In that sense alone it is an idol because that idol is ME.

Now perhaps people are looking for intimacy, for connection on a relational level. But twitter doesn't promote it because it is a one sided conversation - it is "one hand clapping" because it doesn't allow for interaction, it doesn't allow for another person to respond. At least in a blog people can comment and you can enter into a dialogue with them.

However, there's another reason that Twitter is an idol and that is very intimately tied to the medium. It is because Twitter, being limited to 140 characters, and being used by so many people to post unconnected irrelevancies that it provides no context in which to understand the person making them. You would need a person to post minute by minute their life and You, yes You would have to read them just to get a bit of the context of their life and experiences so that you would get some meaningful context for what is being said.
In the end, who is going to read such a one sided monologue with a twit on the other end :)

Now of course you could say that you already know the person however much of the tweets people love to receive are of people that they actually don't know all that well.

So let me encourage you, sit down have a coffee and talk together. Ask them something about them, instead of focusing on hearing your own voice. You will gain so much more from being other person centred.

In Christ,
Gary