Overheard Thoughts - the Allure of Twittering

You're sitting at a very quiet Starbuck's, wearing a CIA ear-piece that lets you hear short tidbits of what's in the heads of passers-by . . but only when YOU want to hear their thought bubbles.

It's happened to me. My name is Susan and I'm a twitterer.

Proof? Susan's Twits

Michael Agger's article in Slate Magazine about The allure of Twitter might just as well have been written by me. He talks about twitter as I experience it, calling the twitters overheard "a slightly nerdier version of the real world."

In this world:

I have their permission to listen in but no obligation to have a witty reply, a sympathetic shoulder or any response whatsoever.
I have the option of following things they say later if I find them interesting or acknowledging something I'm interested in.

Pure pleasure. I can just watch this on my Tweetbar sidebar (a free download from Mike Demers) or I can drop in to my twitter page on the web and read along what people are tweeting.

If I decide to give into the temptation to "watch" this world wide conversation happen in near real time on "twittervision" I may be down the addictive rabbit hole for awhile.

Back to Michael Agger's Twitter insights:

"Unlike open-mic nights, getting tweets from people is enjoyable. There is a pleasant sense of faint connection, as if you are standing silently next to them. It's also a quick shot of empathy: You imagine where they are and what they might be seeing.

"Because Twitter reaches into phones and computers" (but can be enabled and disabled with a simple command) "or wherever a person might be, it's intimate, a friendly buzz in the pocket.

Snippets, thought spurts, stream-of-consciousness, call it what you will, Twitter provides a nice refuge from spam and e-mail. And the freedom of not feeling obligated to reply to twitters and tweets is a huge plus!