Does My Twitter Page Make Me Look Fat?

One of the most fun aspects of Twitter is reading all the funny rhetorical questions we see floating around the Twitterverse. Somehow many of us have found a way to incorporate Twitter into our lives so much so that we can relate it to just about everything.

Today after getting dressed, I looked in my full-length mirror. As I stared at my image, I must have been delirious, because the question I asked myself was, “Does my Twitter page make me look fat?” I’m sure if I had a shrink, he would have a hay day with that one, but to me, it was just a rhetorical question.

The other day I saw a tweet with another question like this, which really caught my attention. I wish I could remember who sent it because I would certainly give them credit. It said, “Does twitter make us ADD?” Obviously the person that sent it didn’t mean the actual ADD which is the very serious Attention Deficit Disorder that plagues so many people. This ADD referred to the urban dictionary-like definition of the abbreviation, which is associated with the simple yet annoying lack of attention span that many of us experience.

It got me thinking about my own daily life, and shockingly, I decided that yes, Twitter does make me have a shorter attention span. Since I’ve been using Twitter, I tend to write and speak in hashtags at times because it’s quicker. If someone is telling me a story that lasts more than a few minutes, I feel myself getting antsy. And, most of all, I now prefer every sentence I say to be succinct, preferably 140 characters or less (ok, just kidding about that one). I even find it hard to sit in church for a whole hour without tapping my foot on the ground because I’m ready to go and move on to the next thing in my day.

Ok, perhaps Twitter isn’t to blame for this. Maybe it’s simply that we live in the information age with technology developing so fast we can barely keep up. We have messages in all forms, shapes and sizes coming at us constantly in our day. Is it possible we are getting addicted to that continuous bombardment? I have no doubt with the continued advancement of augmented reality; this is just going to increase. This very interesting article on The Next Generation suggests that having a short attention span is really by choice because with new technologies, there are easier shortcuts to take. For example, why take time to read the TV Guide when we can scan the menu on our TV screeen with our remote much faster?