In plain view, hidden

[koganbot]

Glenn Greenwald in today's Salon:

John Cole confesses to what he acknowledges is a "Get off my lawn" sentiment in questioning the purpose, value and appeal of Twitter. At the risk of appearing as crotchety as he does, I share that bewilderment. About Twitter messages, John says "they all read like cell phone text messages between 12 year olds," and indeed, the only purpose I can discern is that it provides a format for expressing thoughts that are too inconsequential to merit a stand-alone article or post. For precisely that reason, it is unsurprising that Twitter has become a huge hit among our media stars, for whom triviality is a guiding principle.

Well, that final sentence is gratuitous snark. In any event, I can't speak for Twitter, since I'm not signed up, but Greenwald gives a potential answer to his own question: "it provides a format for expressing thoughts that are too inconsequential to merit a stand-alone article or post." So, being apparently inconsequential, the heat is off. They don't count. So they don't need scrutiny, and therefore they escape censorship by the serious mind (which is not engaged). Hence Twitter can be an area for free play, a field for the forbidden - not a field for the Seriously Recognized Transgression, but for that which is suppressed in virtue of its being beneath notice. Hence Twitter can be a public Unconscious, one that's in plain sight, like pop music before the Beatles. (Not to say that Twitter is like this - as I say, I don't know - but that it has the capacity. But I still don't think I have time for another distraction.)

h/t Tal Rosenberg

Comments

[sm-woods.livejournal.com]

That terrible last sentence ("for whom triviality..." etc.) is certainly one of the dumber sentences Greenwald has written of late, to the point where I might suggest (I mean, I can't say for sure, don't read everything the guy writes) that it's a bit out of character for him -- to be so prissy about it all, I mean. He's a pretty hard-hitting writer most of the time but not by any stretch what I would call an ungenerous thinker. But anyway, I think he's just not getting it right regardless -- Twitter is people chattering and thinking aloud in headlines and puns; the format prevents it from being "in-depth" but that's not to say it's necessarily inconsequential. (I also don't think it's beyond scrutiny, at least among politicos. Media outlets like CNN and MSNBC are watching like a hawk -- and feeding into their own reporting -- the pronouncements and back and forths on Twitter between various senators, members of congress, etc. John McCain, for one, seems to be using it specifically to push a talking point forward. Though maybe what you're saying here is not that people aren't reading the stuff but that people aren't really paying attention?)