Old People Don’t Understand Twitter

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Okay, that isn’t really fair. It isn’t that “old” people do not understand Twitter, it is THIS old person that doesn’t understand it. Kinda funny watching Kevin Spacey school David Letterman on how to use Twitter.
 
I'm 31 and I don't understand any of it. Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, etc.
 
Well I'll go on record to say I don't not understand the purpose of Twitter.

Me either. All I've seen it do is make people not pay attention when walking so they fall into open man holes or take their hands off the steering wheel while driving so they can tweet about the jackass who just cut them off.
 
Depends on how you define "old." It seems to me that the people who really like Twitter are mostly late boomers/generation Jones. That's why its really taken off with TV news people and older personalities on the internet (Leo Laporte, for example).

Its just the latest in a trend of tools to satisfy boomer narcissism. First they had websites but those were too hard. Then blogs were popular, but still required effort (thus most of them died off). Now they have twitter.
 
Can't say I've got into the new generation thing of using these services either.
 
I don't think anyone really understands twitter.
 
I'm 40 . I understand it, I just don't care.

Some people get value out of little information. I need as much as I can get or it's a waste of time.
 
Those sites are intended for socializing, but for me socializing is made in person, face to face, not “virtually”.

In a few years we’ll end up like the people from the movie WALL-E :p
 
i don't understand it either,but i never bothered to find out what it is.
 
Reminds me of Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer:
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm just a caveman. I fell on some ice and later got thawed out by some of your scientists. Your world frightens and confuses me! Sometimes the honking horns of your traffic make me want to get out of my BMW and run off into the hills, or wherever. Sometimes when I get a message on my fax machine, I wonder: "Did little demons get inside and type it?" I don't know! My primitive mind can't grasp these concepts."
 
Things are spiraling out of control. I think I have become lost in a world of electronic madness.

One of my sons informed me this week that my cell phone has become obsolete and I must head down to the Cell Phone store and get a phone that is contemporary with the time.

I pointed out that the fancy Razor/Slim line phone with camera built in that he made me trade my perfectly good flip-top Motorola cell phone for two years ago still works perfectly fine. Well, except for the camera thing. Never could figure that out.. Even the few times I actually did take pictures I couldn’t figure what to do with them and gave up.

That is except when I would push the wrong button and take a video of the ceiling or my feet.

Seems the issue is that I am unable to text with the tiny little 3 character buttons. "Hi, son," would come out looking like, "Gh Qmo." My grandkids have even spoken to my wife about Poppa’s crazy text messages. Give me a break. Whatever happened to actually talking on a phone? Isn’t that what they were invented for?

They want me to get one of those phones that you can turn upside down and sideways and has a typewriter keyboard with keys about one-eighth the size of my pinky finger.

One of my four sons is a realtor whose real occupation is fly fishing. "Way to go, son."
Or in my text language, "Xbz um Io, rmo."

We were floating the Yakima River in his guide quality drift boat south of Ellensburg, Washington. We were miles from anything remotely resembling civilization. Rock canyon walls were on either side of us. Bear with me as I try to explain this strange thing.

His "Blackberry" rang. It was blue and I asked him why it wasn’t called a Blueberry. He shook his head with that “dealing with an elder” despair look I get a lot these days. It was another realtor who called to say that the sellers he represented had agreed to my son’s client’s changes and he had the signed documents in hand.

My son told him to FAX the papers to his office and he would get them signed and Faxed back, to close the deal that morning. A minute later the phone rang and he hit a few buttons and looked over the FAX, now on the Yakima River with us.

He then called his clients and told them he was Faxing the papers to them to sign and asked them to FAX them back to his office. While he was waiting, he hooked into a fat rainbow and was just releasing this 22 inch beauty as his phone rang again with the signed FAX from his clients.

He called the other realtor and told him he was sending the signed papers back by FAX. The deal was closed. He smiled and just said, "You are a little behind the times, Dad." I guess I am.

I thought about the sixty million dollar a year business I ran with 1800 employees, all without a Blackberry that played music, took videos, pictures and communicated with Facebook and Twitter.

I signed up under duress for Twitter and Facebook, so my seven kids, their spouse, 13 grandkids and 2 great grand kids could communicate with me in the modern way. I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter with only 140 characters of space.

That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up for Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and Twittererific Tweetdeck, Twitpix and something that sends every message to my cell phone and every other program within the texting world.

My phone was beeping every three minutes with the details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. I am not ready to live like this. I keep my cell phone in the garage in my golf bag.

The kids bought me a GPS for my last birthday because they say I get lost every now and then going over to the grocery store or library. I keep that in a box under my tool bench with the Blue tooth [it’s red] phone I am supposed to use when I drive. I wore it once and was standing in line at Barnes and Nobles talking to my wife as everyone in the nearest 50 yards was glaring at me. Seems I have to take my hearing aid out to use it and got a little loud.

I mean the GPS looked pretty smart on my dash board, but the lady inside was the most annoying, rudest person I had run into in a long time. Every 10 minutes, she would sarcastically say, "Re-calc-ul-ating" You would think that she could be nicer. It was like she could barely tolerate me. She would let go with a deep sigh and then tell me to make a U-turn at the next light. Then when I would make a right turn instead, it was not good.

When I get really lost now, I call my wife and tell her the name of the cross streets and while she is starting to develop the same tone as Gypsy, the GSP lady, at least she loves me.

To be perfectly frank, I am still trying to learn how to use the cordless phones in our house. We have had them for 4 years, but I still haven’t figured out how I can lose three phones all at once and have run around digging under chair cushions and checking bathrooms and the dirty laundry baskets when the phone rings.
The world is just getting too complex for me. They even mess me up every time I go to the grocery store. You would think they could settle on something themselves but this sudden "Paper or Plastic?" every time I check out just knocks me for a loop.

I bought some of those cloth re-usable bags to avoid looking confused but never remember to take them in with me.

Now I toss it back to them. When they ask me, "Paper or Plastic?" I just say, "Doesn’t matter to me. I am bi-sacksual." Then it‘s their turn to stare at me with a blank look.
 
I am officially allergic to twitter. The idea of sharing every aspect of my life makes me break out in hives. Plus, I put my foot in my mouth by myself enough times I don't need the internet to help...
 
I think middle-aged people are the ones it caters to.

Younger (<30) generation really hasn't fallen for it (They realize Facebook does all Twitter does and more). And the older generation (>60) is the last "non-techie" oriented generation that's going out the door.


I personally use Facebook... Actually not everyone is (or cares) about tech enough to check on email all the time. But they DO use Facebook. So it's actually become, at least for me, another communication medium. "Email, Text, Facebook".
 
35 and don't care. Twitter, twatter, facebook, fark, farter, whatever the hell it is. It's just stupid. It's a fad and will pass like everything else.
 
it's not.

it's only going to get bigger.

get use to it when you can.

HOW is it going to expand? It was conceived by pretty much ripping off Facebook's status tool. What else would improve it?? Profile pages? Guess what- Facebook already has that.

Just because a bunch of senators and government officials recently discovered it doesn't make it any cooler than it was 4 years ago.
 
There's really nothing to "understand" about Twitter. I think people who havedn't used it, like Letterman, just assume it has to be more complicated than it sounds, because it sounds so astonishingly stupid.

They were both sort of dancing around the fact that it basically boils down to "writing something on the internet." Every time they say "twitter" in that clip, you could replace it with "the internet" and it would still be the same.
 
Blah, I know about the concept of twitter, I just don't understand it... yeah a text message to the www... WOW that's exciting. it kind of reminds me of my friend who loves text messaging.. I call him and it rings and rings then goes to voice mail so I leave a message... then a minute later I get a text "what did you want?"... ah to talk... that's what a phone is for you know? if I wanted to text I would have, I wanted to talk... is that so much to ask in this day and age?
 
Yeah, this whole texting craze is stupid. I mean, it has it's uses here and there, but not for a main means of communication - I use the phone or actually talk in person. Texting is one step above Morse code in my book.
 
I call him and it rings and rings then goes to voice mail so I leave a message... then a minute later I get a text "what did you want?"... ah to talk... that's what a phone is for you know? if I wanted to text I would have, I wanted to talk... is that so much to ask in this day and age?

*Raises hand* I'm guilty of that myself actually.

In an email or text: They ask the question directly and I can respond directly. Cut and dry.
Phone calls usually drag on for much longer, and when I'm busy they put a big stop block in my path.
 
I'm 31 and I don't understand any of it. Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, etc.

I understand, but I really don't care.

Apparently, these websites are for people to keep in contact with each other, and they use them as a way to describe who you are.

about 8+ years ago I used to be nuts with AIM and other messengers. Then it got to the point went I get on my PC I could never what I wanted to do, because I was always talking to someone.

I uninstalled that crap and never want to see it again. Twitter and My-space are for people who try to make their uninteresting lives seem interesting to the opposite sex. Sometimes same sex, if you bend that way.
 
I don't understand twitter either, unless the object is to slowly deteriorate our communication skills.
 
I'm 19 and I think Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace can go blow a horse.

they're just for people who think their lives are important.

for example, Twitter..

"Gonna go take a dump"

"wow im constipated lol"

"ok its out, wiping"
 
I twitter for fun. I have a bad memory and scared i might get Alzheimer at an old age. This would be nice to have when im old that i could actually look back before im completely gone. Of course i don't write stuff like taking a crap, when i leave and come home, when i go to school. I keep it limited.
 
See! Old people do understand twitter. Dave said it succinctly in his last line:

"oh yeah, it's a waste of time"

Perhaps it's just that young people have too much time to fuk around with their thumbs.
 
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