Twitter-verse

The results from today's Crosstown game were decidedly less satisfying...Moving on.

I don't know if it has officially entered the dictionary, but if I have to lay bets on what will wind up being the Word of the Year, I'm betting the farm on "twitter". It's a noun, a verb, an adjective, and every so often a complete sentence all on its own. How did we find out Shaquille O'Neal and Paul Pierce's opinions on the NBA Finals? How did we learn that Oprah needs a suggestion on how to get ticks off a dog? The latest news and initiatives from that guy in the White House? Not to mention his loyal opposition? How about the really mundane s&*t like what Ashton Kutcher had for breakfast, USC coach Pete Carroll's choice for Song of the Day, or what Alex Richanbach of the acclaimed short film Stealing Second is up to? (This last one is a personal favorite of mine; I check it every day in the hopes that something useful will pop up. No luck so far, but I have to admit I'm jealous of how he apparently was in the vicinity of Al Pacino at the Denver Airport's Panda Express.) It was all via Twitter. It seems appropriate that this week, as golf's premier national championship is being contested on a true public course (for $50, anybody can play Bethpage Black), we were privy to up-to-the-second updates from numerous journalists and golfers on the playing conditions that ultimately led to a suspension of play. Twitter's become so prevalent in such a short timespan that ESPN's coverage of the rain delay led with Ian Poulter's "tweet" from the practice putting green: a very deadpan "Where's my canoe?"

I can't pin it on any one moment - perhaps it was the cover of Time three weeks ago, or how seemingly every show at ESPN now comes with the "Follow us on Twitter..." bug in the bottom third of the screen, or the inexplicable amount of press coverage devoted to Kutcher's "bet" with CNN over who could reach 1 million followers on Twitter first - but Twitter seems to be rapidly taking over our daily lives. As Conan O'Brien deadpanned last night, "It's tough to believe that only one year ago, man was totally in the dark about what Wilmer Valderamma had for lunch." A couple friends from my previous life out in California circled the rounds on Twitter breaking down all the latest minutiae from Parks & Resorts. My former colleague Allen was particularly amused by one report on the flurry of Twittering caused by a failure of a key Fantasmic show element:

OnFantasmic:"The lack of dragon nearly instntly sent rippls through the
Twitterverse as fans sent out dsappontd Tweets" LOLThe twitterverse!

I was laughing too, Allen. But just beneath the laughter was a very serious point, one I think we're taking for granted as too ludicrous to be taken seriously. While it does sound (and on many levels is) very funny and moronic, Twitter has rapidly evolved into precisely what that reporter was talking about - it's own freaking little miniaturized version of the universe, duping us into thinking that Oprah and Obama, Shaq and Kobe, ESPN and CBS are just like the neighbors next door who pop in to borrow a cup of sugar. Is this a good thing or the signal that western civilization as we know it is about to crumble until we cannot fathom a moment when we didn't communicate via 140-character, horrendously grammar-inaccurate internet posts? I'm undecided at this time. Just be warned though, over-indulgence on Twitter can lead to harsh consequences. Observe what happened to ESPN's Kenny Mayne: