Off My Noodle

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Thou Shalt Twitter!

by Judy Gruen

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To keep my coolness quotient high, I, like millions of others, have mindlessly followed the latest commandment issued by the High Eminences of Social Networking: Thou Shalt Twitter!
For the uninitiated, Twitter is a free online social networking tool. The point of it is to attract other Twittering “followers,” and if you’re lucky, fame in your field. In only two weeks, I had miraculously captured 100 followers, including a woman whose mission is to send salvos of food facts approximately every three minutes. Thanks to her, I now know that today is National Hot Pastrami Day, making my life that much more complete.

Aggressive Twitters who madly start following everyone they can find can recruit 3,000 or more followers in short order. Very famous people, such as John Cleese, effortlessly gain stratospheric numbers. When I last checked, the British comic actor had 26,451 of them.
Twitter may be another short-lived social networking craze, but I like it. Its brilliance is that each “tweet,” as posted messages are called, are no more than 140 character spaces in total. This is not only much more time-efficient than blogging, but for the ardent wordsmith, thinking up succinct, 140-character messages is an ongoing and exciting challenge. As a word purist, I am sad to report that most people on Twitter use those hideous texting abbreviations 2 make rm for 4 msgs, but I refuse, on the principal that somebody ought to be left in Western Civilization to defend correct spelling. It’s an increasingly lonely job, much like the Maytag repairman or the Tupperware saleslady, but I vow to carry on the fight, even down to the last, fully spelled syllable.
I also like Twitter because I can blow off steam in bite-sized snippets. For example, after an unpleasant encounter with a whole wheat vegan type, I wrote, “I wish that people who give up all white flour and sugar would keep it to themselves.” This still left me 67 character spaces to go, but I had said my piece. (It also earned me several huzzahs from like-minded followers.) Commenting on the news can require more space: “People who drink 3-4 cups of coffee a day reduce risk of Alzheimer’s, study says; based on my iffy memory, I’m clearly not drinking enough.” But even this left me one character space to spare. Memo to all Twitterers: you can post messages without mangling the English language through cyber-chat abbreviations. You just need to be pithy. Like me.
But imagine how much you could say if you tweeted in Hebrew? Hebrew is such an economical language: you don’t even need vowels! This got me to thinking what a shame it was that Moses wasn’t able to use Twitter when he was recruiting his own followers. You can’t help but feel for Moses. The man had just rescued a nation from cruel Egyptian bondage and he still had to listen to them kvetching that the desert was too hot, too cold, and too sandy. Not only that, based on their desert guide books, they were still at least 5,000 kilometers from a decent Chinese restaurant.
But if Moses had been able to lead the Jews remotely, via Twitter (sent by BlackBerry), he could have been spared some of these complaints. He also could have stayed up on Mount Sinai a lot longer, keeping tabs on those rambunctious members of the tribe, soothing nerves whenever required. This might have prevented the Jews from panicking when Moses appeared to be late descending from the mountain and making that very unfortunate golden calf. Even the ever-patient and unflappable Moses lost his Mosaic cool when he saw what his followers had done, and who could blame him? In his frustration, he broke those newly minted stone tablets into smithereens, which led to his having to shlep up the mountain again, to retrieve The Ten Commandments: The Sequel.
Yes, I am certain that Moses would have had an easier time of it if he had just used Twitter to send real-time updates from Mount Sinai to the Jewish people. They could even have received sneak peeks at the commandments as Moses was busily writing them down, and other pertinent messages:
First commandment coming soon: “I am God.” (You knew that anyway, guys.)
This one’s a little harder: Don’t take God’s name in vain, even during close championship playoff games. I know you can do it!

First the bad news: you have to work six days a week. The good news: You get the 7th day off. No work at all!
Weather update: Major thunder and lightning tonight, with scattered fire and shofar blasts from heaven. Stay calm. Everything’s under control.
As you can see, Moses could have saved himself a lot of headaches if he’d have been able to lead the Jews via Twitter from an undisclosed, secure location: up in a cloud next to God. And no doubt he’d have gathered oodles more followers even than John Cleese.
But why shouldn’t we pick up from where Moses left off? We can use Twitter not only to spout off our own opinions—we can broadcast Biblical wisdom every day:

Loving your fellow as yourself isn’t just a good idea: it’s the law! Or: If people had not been coveting other people’s things for so long, we wouldn’t need a bailout now.

I say let’s try it. Not only might we gain more followers, but Moses would surely be proud.
(Originally published in slightly different form on Aish.com.)

Posted by judy @ 10:19 AM • (15) Comments