As the NFL playoffs continue, twitter is increasingly overrun by sports enthusiasts. Sports Enthusiasts traditionally emerge most consistently on Sundays, though they are known to also surface at other times. During the playoffs their numbers grow to unimaginably irritating levels. Their tweets generally consist of some poorly punctuated statement along the lines of “WOW the refs r blind” or “TOUCHDOWN.”
What Sports Enthusiasts fail to realize is that their tweets usually go unread because those who care are busy watching the game and tweeting similar updates, while those who don’t care are busy regretting their decision to read their timeline during a football game.
There are certain Sports Enthusiasts who supplement their play-by-play tweets with simply riveting tweets regarding analysis of games and players. These tweets often look something like “that was a bad call” or “we shud fire the coach.” These tweets are similar to the ones referenced earlier in that people who don’t care dont want to see them except these tweets often get passionate responses which can lead to stunning, intelligent discussions, on my twitter timeline, about the stated opinions.
Twitter allows Sports Enthusiasts an open pathway to vast audiences which is only truly useful to people like the Dalai Lama, who needs to share worldwide messages of love. If somebody is eager to share their excitement over a timely home run with friends, wouldn’t it make sense for them to watch the game with friends? Instead, Sports Enthusiasts become captivated with the idea of having a huge audience to their opinions and therefore focus on this avenue of idea-spreading over conventional avenues such as speaking words to real humans. They then convince themselves that the tweet’s three favorites and zero responses constitute successful communication.
I urge all tweeters, particularly Sports Enthusiasts to stop the epidemic that is tweeting and revert back to old-style speaking conversations which, known to allow over 140 characters per idea, can be profoundly valuable.
