On March 21, Twitter will turn seven-years-old. That's impressive. Seven years is a pretty short amount of time to become worth approximately $10 billion. When I turned seven, I was worth approximately one holographic Charizard.
But Twitter's birthday has caused me to wonder how many more it will live to see. Will it keep going strong or will it slowly become some desolate virtual ghost town? And if someone was to draw a picture of Twitter as an actual ghost town, what do you think the chances are that they would make the tumbleweeds look like hashtags? How clever would that be on a scale from one to ten? I'm guessing a solid 6.5.
But seriously. If Twitter does die out, it will become an artifact to our culture, every tweet perfectly preserved, frozen in time for future historians. It will be like Pompeii... if everyone in Pompeii kept meticulous records of their daily musings. "Just ate a bagel. #IHopeThisVolcanoILiveNextToDoesntErupt"
On the other hand, if Twitter continues to thrive, anyone who regularly tweets could someday have a 15 or 20-year twistory (that's short for tweet history; you're all welcome). And having 20 years of tweets could be interesting.
Well actually, the dictionary definition of a twitter is literally "a short burst of inconsequential information," so I don't know. Having 20 years of inconsequential information might not turn out to be very consequential.
Currently, I have about four years of so-called "inconsequential information," so I'm going to perform an experiment. I'm going to go through all my old tweets. My hypothesis is that reading my twistory (See that? I used it again. That means it's a real word now.) will be a nostalgic and enlightening experience. I believe that each forgotten tweet could remind me of the sense of humor I had at a specific time, the kinds of things I valued, the person I was, etc.
I'll begin with my very first tweet:
How soon into an experiment are you allowed to completely give up on your hypothesis? What a terrible first tweet. I don't remember writing this, but if we're going by sheer number of exclamation points, it looks like I mostly valued Cheez-Its at the time, which isn't very enlightening. I still value Cheez-Its. I value them at slightly higher than market value, which is why I tend to buy them.
Off to a bad start. I'll try another tweet though. I'm sure at least one will give me some new perspective on my life.
This was tweeted at 2:28 p.m. on May 8. Still being in bed at 2:28 in the afternoon on any given day is already kind of pathetic. But May 8th happens to be my birthday. So I was apparently still lying in bed at 2:28 in the afternoon on my own birthday, feeling too lazy to get up and drive to hamburgers.
I suck. I'm beginning to regret performing this experiment. I either need to stop tweeting really pathetic things from my life or I need to stop having a really pathetic life to tweet about (I'm leaning towards the latter). I'll try one more though. Just one more. I'll pick it at random. But if this one is dumb then I'm quitting.
Kung Fu Panda was great.
Actually, I'm glad I stumbled across this tweet. I believe it was the wise old tortoise Master Oogway who once said to a certain young panda, "You are too concerned with what was and what will be. There's a saying. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present."
Master Oogway was a wise tortoise, indeed. I shouldn't concern myself with Twitter past and Twitter future. I should only be concerned with Twitter present. Thanks, Master Oogway.
Although, it should be noted that the word "present" comes from the Latin praesent which is the present participle of praeesse , meaning "to be in charge or preside." I'm not saying that means anything. I'm just saying that Master Oogway clearly did not understand how etymology works.