Recently for some reason unknown to me I have found myself often amongst students and colleagues hating on Twitter.  The thing is…they haven’t tried it.

Of course, people are allowed to have opinions, even when they are not based on any real knowledge or experience.  But I have been a bit surprised by how quickly, and with what venom, people are ready to leap into attack mode when someone mentions Twitter.

Wow, some people must really think they are important – as if anyone cares about your sad life.

Don’t people have anything better to do?

Who could be bothered checking to see if someone posted some random note.

As if I want to hear about the boring details of someone else’s life!

It’s a place where sad-cases can find out what P. Diddy is doing every minute of everyday.

Narcissists!

Yesterday a penny dropped for me, and I realised a big reason why I find these comments so unsettling: Why are people so determined to express how much they DON’T care about anyone else’s world?  Sure, meeting in person is a ‘nicer’ way to be closer to people you know, but these comments don’t smack of pro-embodied-socialising; they just reek of tall poppy syndrome and a bunch of I-don’t-care.

I’m hoping some teachers on our school technology committee will start dabbling in Twitter soon, so I can start making the rich professional connections in school that I currently need to seek out of school.  I found this TED Talk on Twitter very interesting, and I’ll pass it on to my colleagues soon: