Twitter Must Be Destroyed!

I GUESS IT'S NOT MAUREEN DOWD'S JOB to be on the cutting edge of technology. The New York Times columnist, according to Wikipedia (the world's most accurate site), writes about politics mostly in columns that "display a critical and irreverent attitude" and she uses an "acerbic, often polemical writing style."

All of that was totally on display in yesterday's Op-Ed piece about Twitter, in which Dowd finally took Twitter down a peg, as if anyone but her really felt it needed that. "I was here on a simple quest," Dowd wrote, "curious to know if the inventors of Twitter were as annoying as their invention." It was some real hard-nosed journalism, in which she asked Twitters founders to "justify themselves."

Now, I'm sure that she was going for some sort of humor with this piece. Or at least I hope that she was. Otherwise, she was just being a dick to the Twitter founders for no good reason. And the two founders read her open hostility toward their lark of an invention -- that is probably way more of a household name than, let's say, "Maureen Dowd" -- and their dislike of her is clear to everyone reading the piece. Everyone but Dowd herself, who finds both of the men "charming" and doesn't notice that one of the men only curtly answers one of her questions before leaving.

Every question she asks them is basically, "So, Twitter is stupid and annoying, even you know that, right?" Or maybe it's, "Why did you fart in the elevator and leave?" Or maybe it's even, "You gave the world AIDS, how can you live with yourselves?"

Look, I'm on Twitter, and my point is NOT that Twitter is the most amazing invention ever. Far from that. Twitter is whatever it is, which is mostly just another entertaining distraction on the web. It's not a threat to our society. It's not a sign of the downfall of man. It's just a dumb website that people enjoy. Mostly younger people. People younger than me. People much younger than Dowd.

Oh shit, I totally snapped Maureen Dowd by calling her old!

And her railing on and on about "how awful Twitter is" reads like a modern version of "Why aren't there Victrolas anymore? I miss the Charleston! And I thought I told you kids to stop playing stickball on my lawn!"

Yes, Maureen, Twitter is frivolous. But who cares if it is?

I can't wait until she writes a scathing column about how gum is terrible because it isn't food. "What's the point? You chew and chew and...THEN WHAT? I'll ask the inventors of gum to apologize to civilization for making what they made instead of making food."

Way to go, print media! Way to decisively prove your relevance!