My friend Lex has shaken me. I hate to use words like crisis and liberation and revelatory when I’m not talking about God, but those are the words that keep coming to mind as I’m here in the midst of a shaking.

Twitter is bad.

I tried giving up Twitter about two years ago, when I saw that the good folks at Good Morning America were tweeting, as a show. And they were doing a piece about Twitter and what it is and why it’s hot and new and here to stay and who tweets and how to tweet and why it’s not something to be afraid of anymore. I decided Twitter’s utter hipness, it’s Facebook-dethroning appeal to me, was dead. The secret was out. The sarcastic, crude, snobbish, exclusive, inclusive, community, authentic, artificial secret was revealed, the medium was corrupted. But no one on Twitter agreed with me, so I didn’t give it up after all.

I tried to tweet every day. You know, something funny. A cute picture of my kids maybe. And I followed people who were friends, and friends of friends. I reciprocated followings to people I didn’t know, but knew who they knew, or followed who they followed. I followed semi-famous people, because that’s who tweets best.

You probably get it already.

Every day.

Every day.

Several times a day.

Refreshing…

4 hours ago

2 min ago

seconds ago

seconds ago.

But I think carrying my iphone around like a portal to the cloud of voiceless followers/followees is kind of hideous. The compulsion to hear what people have to say on Twitter was daily interfering with the need to hear what people have to say in my house, my family, my church, my community. So I tried to go without for a few days, and that was a month ago. I miss it sometimes. But I feel like I’m better off without it, because it was an escape more than an experience. It was not relationship-building, it was probably more harmful, since I tend to err on the side of cynic.

I feel compelled to state here that this is all just me, just my experience. But after taking a step back, I don’t think it is just me. If and when you’re interested in some of the thoughts out there that shook me, read Lex’s post, and the links he mentions. And if nothing else, I would recommend a discipline to try for one week. No twitter or facebook while there’s a human in the room. Just try it. When I did, I quickly discovered the compulsion aspect of it. I wasn’t looking for contact, just for diversion. We are in need of genuine human relationships, and if other people use social media as I do–a projection of the person I want the world to think I am, not who I actually am–then social media is not the place for those relationships to happen. Social media is just a way to create false images, then observe (or even obsess over or stalk) those images. The most powerful relationship-builder is questioning. Twitter and Facebook eliminate questioning. They are declarative statement devices. They are not conversational or layered or nuanced. They are distilled, edited, limited.

I’m still not going to offer a qualification here. I really think these things, and I want you to think about it. I think the jolt I experienced was one of the better things to happen to me in a while, and I hope you feel it too.