Twitterpated

I have always been a little leery of the internet.  I mean, sure, the internet is full of wonderful things like shopping, research, shopping, and streaming television.  But it is also home to YouTube, where just about any doofus with a digital camera can post horribly edited videos of their cat falling off of the ceiling fan.  I mean, any website which is instrumental in enabling a song like "What does the Fox Say" to go viral is clearly insidious.  No amount of online shoe sales will change that. 

Way back when I was in law school, I used the internet for specific purposes.  I occasionally used it to send e-mails, and I used it when I was doing legal research.  But, for me, 'surfing the net' was a terrifying concept. I never just went on a browser and looked around; I didn't feel safe.   The internet was there, lurking behind the computer screen, mocking me for not having the courage to just go on and see where my various clicks would take me. I pictured the internet as some sort of Tron-like alternate universe, and if I clicked on one too many links to random jokes or poorly designed seizure-inducing websites I would be sucked into the monitor and wind up having to defend myself against an evil computer overlord with an electronic Frisbee. 

Then came Facebook.  I skipped over the whole MySpace thing because I wasn't an angst-ridden teenager who just wanted to have their music discovered.  Nope, I went straight to Facebook, because on Facebook I can keep up with my friends who live far away.  On Facebook I can post pictures of my family and my observations of the world.  On Facebook I can sit back and chuckle while reading political posts which induce random people who have never met to begin foaming at the mouth and accuse each other of either being a homophobic racist who hates women and the poor, or a communist who hates America and anyone with a paying job.  

Also, for a while at least, Facebook allowed me to electronically stalk my teenager.  Maggie could hardly wait until her thirteenth birthday so she could get a Facebook account.  Now, teenagers are flocking away from Facebook like movie offers flock from Lindsay Lohan.  These days it's all about Twitter and Instagram. Instagram is harmless.  Any doofus with a smart phone can take random pictures of their own eyeball, apply special effects to the photo to make it appear that the picture was taken in 1973, and then post their new work of art for the world to see.  But Twitter is another thing altogether.  I don't think I'm cut out for Twitter. Twitter is an oozing cesspool of hormone-induced passive-agressive wars between teenagers and whoever Alec Baldwin is ranting at right now.  Every time I log onto Twitter, I instantly feel my I.Q. declining and my age increasing.  Also, I can't handle the character limit.  

I am proud to say that I have recently started to understand the hash tag.  Originally I thought it was a way for teenagers to encode their cell phone numbers, which actually makes no sense because no one calls anybody anymore anyway.  It turns out it is some sort of massive filing system.  What's more, every time someone puts a hash tag in front of something, they create another file in the Twitterverse.  For example, if you have a need to find out what random snotty teenagers are thinking, you just need to search for #ihatemylife or #myparentssuck and you will be instantly transported to a vast repository of tweets about the horrors of being a deprived teenager which were posted via their $500 smartphones.   

I think I have figured out the teenage Twitter rules.  I have gleaned this information by spending hour after mind-numbing hour reading the tweets of  local teenagers.    I will post them here so that if any of you parents decide to cyber-stalk your teenager by creating a fake Twitter profile (which I haven't done because I can't figure out how)  you will be able to blend right in from the get-go.  Are you ready?  

Rule number one:  Never spell anything correctly.  Using correct spelling will instantly identify you as a parent.  As far as I can tell, no one on Twitter knows the difference between your, you're and yore and the word clothes is never spelled with an 'e'.  NEVER.  As a subset of rule one, it is important to mock the misspellings of others via your own ironically misspelled tweets.  For example, if Jane tweets "wow your cloths are ugly #goshopping" you should tweet back something like " @jane learn how to speel #yoursodumb."

Rule number two:  Post as if adults will never read any of your tweets. Teenagers clearly assume that no one over the age of twenty has even heard of Twitter, because the language they use would embarrass even the most profane sailor on the planet and/or Alec Baldwin.  The F-bomb is dropped approximately fifty times per second on Twitter, and that's just from the 13-16 set.  It's as if they believe that the more cursing they do, the smarter they sound.  Their spelling certainly isn't helping.  So if you want to blend in, be sure to curse.  A lot.  If you can misspell the curse words you'll be a Twitter god.  

Rule Three:  Never, EVER directly address anyone.  For example, if you are really angry that Jane is talking about one of your friends behind her back on Twitter, you should NEVER tweet "@Jane please don't talk about Sue behind her back #beagoodfrend."  Instead, you should tweet "@Sue I wish she would just shut up  #cantevenspeel #herclothssuck."  This will ensure that no one will know who you are tweeting about, no one will change their behavior, and everyone at school will begin to inquire, via Twitter of course, who you are tweeting about and what cloths...I mean clothes...they were wearing that day.  

So, go forth and stalk, parents.  I wish you luck.  I hope your I.Q. doesn't drop by thirty points every time you log on and read the innermost thoughts of your daughter's best friend's former boyfriend.  Me, I'm sticking with properly-spelled, grammatically-correct posts on Facebook.