“Couldn’t sleep. Went into kitchen. Gary came in. Turned on light. Gary left. Finished birthday cake”. This is an extract from the personal diary of Roberta Glass (played by Rosanna Arquette) in the 1995 film ‘Desperately Seeking Susan”.
Susan (Madonna) , who is reading it for some clues about Roberta’s personality, comments “It’s gotta be a cover. Nobody’s life could be this boring”.
The point being,of course, that people’s lives could be and too often are this boring.
Twitter is the modern way of sharing mundane details about your life answering the question ‘What are you doing?’ in 140 characters or less founded on the philosophy that “real life happens between blog posts and e-mail”.
It occurs to me that Roberta Glass’s diary entry could be turned into six twitter messages : ‘Can’t sleep’ / I’m in the kitchen/ Gary is coming in /I’m turning on the light/Gary is leaving/I’m finishing my birthday cake’ .
It doesn’t make it more interesting and the whole Twitter principle makes me think of the paranoia for purpose at the heart of T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ (“What shall I do now? What shall I do?……..What shall we do tomorrow? What shall we ever do?)
Of course much the same argument could be made against bloggers so maybe I should stay stum.
