Lost in the labyrinth of tweets!

As of now, Twitter is a religion. At least for the tweeps. For the uninitiated, tweeps are the ones who gave up on ‘real’ life and signed up for Twitter instead. It’s almost similar to the selling-your-soul-to-the-devil-at-a-discounted-price thing. Of course, we shouldn’t generalize the entire crowd on the basis of the majority. Yes, there are some exceptions who sign up and then forget their passwords, and in the process, save themselves from getting 140-ed.

For us, Twitter is more than just an addiction. It’s part of a lifestyle. Moreover, it won’t be an exaggeration to state there are 3 types of people on Twitter: those who never want to leave; those who are always here; and the rest.

You wake up and find yourself on the timeline. You are just dying to make an impression. You can crack a joke, post an url link or twitpic. And the best part is even that won’t make you an attention whore. One fish never accuses another fish of being wet. Everyone is in. Yes, some get luckier than others but it doesn’t matter. Everybody’s part of the stage and there is enough space for more. This urge to be heard via tweets is beyond typos. Sometimes, it’s beyond grammar, too. Unfortunately.

Like Tyler Durden once nearly said, “This is twittermania and it’s ending one tweet at a time.”

Different people are on Twitter for different reasons. Majority are of the social kind. They don’t mind transforming the timeline back to the heydays of Yahoo! chatroom. Minuscule few are dedicated to mentionless tweeting. But one factor binds all the tweeps — their unconstrained disdain for Orkut and in some cases, Facebook. Anyway, it’s a bit hypocritical on our part to find our common alma mater at fault when it’s clearly not. Whatever goes.

Twitter’s Unwritten Rule #1 — If you’ve got absolutely nothing to tweet, tweet.

So what do we tweet about? Well, we mostly tweet shit. No, seriously. We do. You know, stuff that don’t have an iota of significance, not even to the one who’s tweeting. In less harsher words, Twitter is an adult toy. We experience parallel universe, so to speak. After all, there is nothing wrong with it. Here, you become your handle. You don’t even need a topic to tweet. Just look around you. You see things. You tweet things. Simple. No hard and fast rules. No wonder we seem to get more news on Twitter than there is news in this world. Accordingly, we become a dreamer or an activist or a revolutionary. For a day or two or three or four. In a way, we successfully kill time. Sometimes we even kill celebrities. Remember the time when Twitter killed Nelson Mandela, Shashi Kapoor and Abida Parveen when they were pretty much alive? Good.

Twitter’s Unwritten Rule #2 — Don’t keep your crap to yourself. Your timeline is dying to *no*.

Twitter loves sad people and vice versa. Complaining about everything under the sky is a daily phenomenon. Nevertheless, you just find an excuse to tweet. For the record, you are a confirmed twitter-addict when you lose something in your house and search for it on your timeline. The point is you can be sad, cribby and lonely on Twitter. Facebook is not a place to cry your heart out. And even if you do, people will *like* that. Twitter allows you to be depressed. That’s one of the reasons why some of the most painfully honest gems (read: tweets) about sorry life could be seen post-midnight. It’s also when Twitter feels like a city annexed by hopeless romantics.

Twitter’s Unwritten Rule #3 — Feel busier than you really are.

Twitter is dominated by social engineers who are busy wasting their precious talent on timeline. They’ve got all the solutions to all the problems to all the solutions in the world. Plus, there are some really creative people who are busy entertaining others. And there are the ones who feel bad for the world while staying comfy in their air-conditioned rooms. In short, Twitter is longer than 140 characters. Lots of characters, in fact. Some are trolls, some fanatics, some politicos, some so-called orkutiyas. But then, different people are on Twitter for different reasons.

N.B. I wrote this piece for Ashik Gosaliya’s website so thought of sharing here, too.