In Defense of Twitter

People give me shit about a lot of things in life. Mostly, I deserve it. I claim to be a hard-core music lover, yet I watch American Idol. I get a lot of shit about this and that's okay. I also get teased for my ridiculous celebrity crushes or my bizarre taste in everything made in England, especially melodramas about teens.

But recently I mentioned that I'm on Twitter and how much I love it and the person I told this to blatantly laughed at me. I mean, my parents make fun of me, but they are plus 50 and I've had to explain Facebook to them multiple times. But the person who made fun of me is my age, addicted to the Internet, and loves to be a know it all. Sounds like the perfect person for Twitter, right?!

Well, apparently not so much. This person went out to describe Twitter as creepy and just another way for this already narcissistic generation to indulge themselves.

First of all, Twitter, like all social networking sites, is only creepy if you make it creepy. You are the person who choses what to put on there and you have the control over it. You also have the control to follow certain people and if you don't like them, simply unfollow. This argument can be applied to Facebook as well. I'm tired of people saying it's creepy.

Twitter is fantastic for lots of reasons, but the biggest reason why I love it is because I find out so much via Twitter. To paraphrase the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Twitter lets me get high on information. I am able to know about lots of things, current events, sports, pop-culture, everything all at once. I can go to one place and loads of things are there. I like to follow publishing companies or book reviewers to hear about the exciting things going on in the book world. I enjoy Seth Meyer's running commentary on the World Cup. I hear about cool shows and up and coming artists from the MTV News writers. I even know some of the funny musings of friends on family vacations.

Twitter also makes connections a little stronger. For example, I really miss Conan O'Brien. I became kinda attached to him while he was over at NBC and then he left. But, thanks to Twitter, I still have a little Coco in my life thanks to his once-a-day tweets.

I follow about 200 people on Twitter which sounds like a lot (click here for a list of people I like to follow on Twitter!), but some more active than others. I also use their awesome list option on a daily basis. It's good for a quick update. Now, if they could only get Denver as a trending location, I would be a very happy Tweeter.