Twitter Dee - Twitter Dum

Not to brag, but I now email, blog and have a faceless page on facebook. I’m still thinking about which picture to post. A very nice one came with my new wallet and I’m considering that one.

Mastering, well that may be a stretch, let me rephrase that. Learning the basics of these new telecommunication networks may seem like no major accomplishment to the average six year-old, but to a this boomer now eligible to file for Social Security, it’s something to crow about. Which brings me to Twitter—my new frontier.

I have friends who twitter. Oops! Twitter, they tell me, is not a verb. My friends tweet. I assume this word choice comes from the days when we found out things that others didn’t particularly want us to know and claimed a little birdie told us. Another thought is that this network was intended to send love letters setting hearts atwitter. I’ll use my search engine to find out the real story and report back.

A good friend of mine assured me that Twitter was a snap. Her 88-year-old mother was tweeting and would be happy to walk me through the process. No offense, to her mother, but if she could do it, so could I.

On August 6th, I decided the time was right. Twitter.com, ready or not, here I come. I entered my name. Choosing a user name is always fun. Cher was already taken as it always is, so I chose something easier to remember—my own name. Passwords are always difficult for me. I have more of them than the U. S. government has clunkers. I opted for my techno one. Twitter told me it was weak. I chose another. Twitter said that was weak too. I went through six more weak ones until Twitter was finally happy. Note: MuscleboundSr is now taken.

My next step was to Create Account. I was feeling pretty cocky until a series of twisted letters appeared on the screen. Twitter said this was for security purposes, so I couldn’t ignore it. I haven’t seen letters so squiggly since I renewed my driver’s license. I closed one, squinted with the other duplicated them perfectly. Just as I finished, Twitter crashed. It went twud.

Now I’d done it. I’d silenced Twitter. Tweets were no doubt circling in cyberspace bumping into one another and interfering with weather satellites. Had I toppled Doppler? Would those tweets interfere with airplanes like geese do? Would we have cable?

I didn’t know what the penalty for crashing Twitter would be. I imagined the Twitter police marching to our door. Chances are they’d have blue birds on their shoulders. They’d slap handcuffs around my wrists and cage me. Just in case, I ran upstairs and wiped my keyboard clean. If need be, I’d ask my husband to check our bank balance online.

And where in the world did I stand with Twitter? Did this crash mean I was a half-twit?

The news of Twitter’s demise made national, and though I didn’t check the BBC, most likely international news. Officials and conspiracy theorists have called it a cyber attack and blamed it on a group of politically motivated hackers. I know better.

But I ain’t singing.