Slashdot Mirror
Twitter Considered Harmful To Swine-Flu Panic
judgecorp writes "Twitter is being criticized for spreading panic about swine flu. This is not just knee-jerk Luddism 2.0: it's argued that Twitter's structure encourages ill-informed repetition, with little room for context, while older Web media use their power for good — for instance Google's Flu Trends page (which we discussed last winter), and the introduction of a Google swine flu map." On a related note, reader NewtonsLaw suggests that it might be a good idea, epidemiologically speaking, to catch the flu now vs. later.
http://xkcd.com/574/
I'm not sure if that's funny, ironic, satiristic, scary or just reality, but, you've GOT to wonder...
http://www.bistolas.net
Just lick a kid with autism and you will be safe!
People using twitter, or people blaming twitter. What's the word I'm looking for?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
might be a good idea, epidemiologically speaking, to catch the flu now vs. later.
That's silly: why would the solution to eradicating a disease be catching it when it's already out there?
A better solution would be to treat the causes of the disease in the first place. In this case, H1N1 is a variant of the Spanish flu. Spain, Mexico? see a pattern? Of course, the solution is to ban Spanish and classical guitar worldwide.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Giving people a voice spreads panic. Film at 11.
People want to be heard. And they learned from the news that bad news get the most attention. So what do you do when you want the most attention? You spread bad news. You invent them where necessary, because everyone else does it too and you gotta outdo them.
We, in the free world, didn't learn the lesson that people with tightly controlled media learned a long time ago: Just because you may say the truth doesn't mean that you have to. We grew up with free press and the idea that you can tell it the way it is. The fallacy was to assume people would do just that.
Maybe this, along with other similar "problems", will teach us that, surprise, surprise, people lie to you when they think they gain an advantage out of it. Just don't believe everything you hear.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Reminds me of my local Fox News station that carried an official statement from the government about how people shouldn't panic. Then immediately followed it with a report of the number of cases around the country, then an interview with one of the victims saying how awful it was to vomit for hours on end. And then all the places and all the ways you can catch the flu, and what you should do if you do.
Fair and balanced once again.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
This isn't all that rare on Twitter. #amazonfail is a good example of the Twitter jumping to conclusions and blowing something way out of proportion.
I mean, I'm sure the chance is there, but it would be more evolutionarily advantageous if the flu didn't kill off its hosts, instead allowing them to run around as carriers. Right?
Also, too many early deaths and Madagascar is closed shut...
Does anyone recall the "racial caution" given to asian people (and by asian, I mean oriental, not the rest of asia that is usually ignored when people say asia) when SARS was the big worry?
Now it will be avoiding anyone of hispanic decent and of course anyone would just couldn't keep away from "spring break fever?"
In any case, looking at the google tracking information so far, it's pretty darned slight. Given that there are plenty of people who have already recovered from it, I would have to estimate that this is still little more than an ordinary flu.
People die more often of other diseases that are more easily treatable than this. I think the usual fatalities will apply -- the extremely young and extremely old. A vaccine will be put out before too long but I think with all the quarantine activity going on, it is already pretty well contained. (There may be times when the directed focus of the people is useful... now if we can just direct the focus of the people on civil liberties and the governments gone wild problems something might be accomplished.)
Quick! Before it's too late! Remove them from the language spec, along with GOTO!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The "no context" is not an inescapable consequence of the infamous 140-character medium -- the web has a useful, low-character, way to spread context: links. With bit.ly and similar services, embedding links to longer reports is easy.
News at 11
The rapid dissemination of information that twitter provides can be a good thing (or at least so I read on Bad Astronomer, I still haven't been to twitter after the first time I went there to see what it was), but seriously, the same rules apply as with anything you read on the Internet.
If you're a twitter user and you feel the need to let people know about things, at least link them to a reputable information source. No, an obvious conspiracy site saying this is a terrorist attack is not an information source.
Am I the only one that finds is somewhat amusing to see a blog post criticizing the new social media star Twitter of misinforming people?
On another note, blogger Kragen Javier Sitaker, @kragen has written an interesting entry on How False Rumors Can Cost Lives in light of the #swineflu crisis on Twitter by discussing the aftermath of Tuskegee on the African American community. Although I agree with many items on his personal responsibilities list, it seems almost impossible to stop inane comments from taking over any social media site open to the general public. Can we name this phenomenon after me... Hisham's Law?
one of the victims saying how awful it was to vomit for hours on end.
Maybe just a strange coincidence, but Twitter itself seems to me like a place where people are vomiting continuously.
Which, you are completely, utterly, incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mortality_from_H5N1
If that doesn't scare the hell out of you, how about you go find some H5N1 and let us all know how happily safe it is!
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Panic, unlike influenza, can be "spread" only to those who willingly accept it.
but it looks like google's flu trends is based off who searches for flu and flu like words. how can that be accurate in the current situation we're in?
I have just finished watching the evening news here in New Zealand(its 7:00pm Tuesday night) and they have been interviewing a family through a window of their quarantined house. To add to the picture, additional cameramen out on the road, hamming it up and fearful to go any closer. The main network channel is bringing test results "live at 9pm".
It is theatre at its best. It makes "alarmist" twitter look boring.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
The Internet adds two thing on to of just giving voice to people who are uninformed:
1) Giving voice to the crazies. There are lots of crazy people in the world. Many of these crazy people like to predict doom at every turn. While there are some historical examples of the doomsday prophets that got a widespread voice, most were just ignored. Now the Internet lets them publish to a world wide audience, and to find other crazies like them to reinforce their views. It isn't just that they are uninformed, it is that they actually want the doomsday scenario to be true.
2) Anonymity. Part of the problem of calling out doom in the real world is that if you end up being completely and totally wrong, people may decide to ignore you, ridicule you, maybe even pop you in the mouth. You become the crazy guy that nobody will invite over and so on. Well not on the net, there's basically no consequences for your actions. In another forum I saw someone who has said that for sure, this is The Big One(tm). (S)he threw out a whole bunch of "This is what's gonna happen," statements, with no backing. However when (s)he's wrong, as is almost certainly the case, there'll be no repercussions. (S)he can pull the same shit during the next big thing.
So the next just creates this perfect storm for doomsday hysteria: The information is spread instantly, there's no credentials check so there's lots of uninformed people, the crazies can talk all they like, and nobody is held accountable. Thus it becomes real easy for "A man in Brazil is coughing," to be blown up in to "All of Brazil is infected and now has a zombie apocalypse," in a matter of hours.
My advice to everyone is same as always: Trust the experts, in this case the CDC and WHO. Wash your hand often (this is a good idea no matter what) and make sure you've got some soup and acetaminophen on hand since if you get sick, you aren't likely to die, but you probably won't feel like shopping and will likely want those two things.
I hate twitter. Please can someone make a new Internets keep the porn and just not allow social networking sites. Also ban the use of the phrase 'web 2.0' or web *.* of any sort.
Seriously - Slashdot story - twitter being used to spread panic, then as a fucking follow-on, quoting 'newton's law' and advocating that people rush out and get the flu now (i.e. PANIC).
Seriously we all whinge about standards here but this is a joke.
Yes it may make statistical sense to get it early so you get full access to medical care - but advocating this position IS SPREADING PANIC - things are NOT that bad yet - we get 100% detection of moratality rate, but we do NOT know how widespread it is. If it turns out its 10,000 rather than 2000 infected than this is NO WORSE than a very bad normal flu.
There are so many diseases here like cholera/typhoid/TB.... that the swine flu will have to get in line to infect It will be well over a 100 years before it gets a chance to clear the waiting list.
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
That pretty much sums up every news item (and it's been the headline story, too) for a couple of days. Either the BBC news thinks that anything more technical would be too difficult for their journalists to explain, or that it would be "elitist" by excluding stupid people from understanding it. I'll know that they've descended to the absolute bottom of the barrel when they start quoting twitter as a source: expected any day soon, as their other channels of information are non-existent.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
That is so lame. If someone wanted to find out more they could still go on google flu trend or whatever-if it spreads anything it's opinion and alot of people link to newspaper sites that seem to be making more of an uproar the on situation than anywhere else...ridiculous-people can't state their opinion anymore? Let's hope the world hasn't gotten so fickle that they'll believe anything they read.
Personally I think it'd be awesome if somebody set up a system that got the locations of confirmed cases (like pigflumap.com) vs. the locations people were Twittering from, and mapped out the overlapping areas where people had a genuine reason to be worried. Anyone know about a way to go about this?
Why all the xkcd related posts lately?
It's not terribly surprising that twitter is full of uninformed bullshit, what do you expect? It's essentially web diarrhea as it encourages people to gush the first thing that comes to mind. Informed discussion takes actual thought and dare I say reasoning, neither of which lends itself to the twitter format. It's just background noise.
What concerns me is that the conventional media is taking their cues and sometimes even stories from things like twitter. Hearsay from unmoderated and unverified sources suddenly becomes fact. A case in point was yesterday the BBC said that the Mexican government was underestimating the crisis on the basis of that's what people said in an online forum! They are treating these probably uninformed and definitely fearful anonymous people as "feet on the ground" and using their statements when they can't even begin to verify the veracity of their statements, or that they are even local to the event.
I'd never state that the media used to be a paragon of virtue and accuracy, however they used to have to work for it. Now they are trawling forums and twitter and treating it as gospel, which is bad for everyone if the news becomes completely inaccurate they will destroy their credibility and if that happens what sources can people trust?
I'm not saying close twitter down, if you like it then go wild, fill your boots. I'm just saying that anyone who uses it as "factual" data should be dragged over a bed of gravel, dipped in vodka, and then rubbed in salt.
Enough of the garbage, please.
Twitter has been excellent.
@BreakingNews reporters @mpoppel and @RodrigoMx have been doing a sterling job over the last few days, as have @Veratect and @Swineflu2009.
And there's also @CDCemergency for those who like "official" sources.
Well, it's not a hard prediction. I mean, whole threads of uninformed and stupid people spewing stupidities... on the internet? Who would have guessed? ;) In related news, bears do poop in the woods, the pope is indeed a catholic, and the ocean is indeed wet.
On the other hand, to be fair, the internet only made it easy to run into such conversations which otherwise would have happened at the pub or at a street corner, with equally uninformed people nodding through and offering their own stupid advice. Just think of all the cabbies who can't manage their own finances, but are ready to discourse at length about how the government should fix the economy. Or of all the people who can't be diplomatic enough to their neighbour, but apparently know exactly what the president should tell France or Russia. Etc.
And occasionally whole "theories" have been formed out of such stupid-preaching-to-the-stupid situations.
E.g., historically "animal magnetism" was born out of weaker correlations than the "lick an autistic kid" in the comic. And some people still buy magnets and crystals as cures... although they were known to be scams at least as early as 1841 when Charles Mackay published his "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds."
E.g., homeopathy was born out of the observation that, basically, small doses of quinine cure malaria, but high doses of quinine cause the same kind of shivers as malaria. In the meantime we know why both happen, and it has nothing to do with "like cures like". But some people _still_ insist on believing in a cure that's intellectually on par with "lick an autistic kid" and born out of a correlation that was every bit as stupid and superficial. (In fact, just watch, I'm going to rub my crystal ball and predict that someone will promptly post a reply as to how wrong I am, and how homeopathy works and is proven and cures everything from hypochondria to cancer;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
However, you can get revenge that way.
Who didn't fix the well known critical vulnerability of Swindows and become now members of the conpigger aka swineflu.w32 botnet.
logic error:
blaming twitter is like blaming an email server... following your logic if I and a few other people took a shit in a bucket and mailed it to you, you would blame the post office and not us? well give me your address than!
At least I won't have to bother with all this washing your hands, avoiding public places, looking out for symptoms malarkey. Serves you meat eaters right!
The difference is that we get a new sort of belief chain.
In the pub your degrees of freedom is 1 maybe 2, but on the Internet it truly becomes 6...
So while in a pub you will have people spewing theories, it will stay in the pub. Whereas on the Internet, a friend copies a friend, copies a friend and at the end we have the entire world believing things will come to an end.
In this stock market the reason why it was such a harsh drop was not because times were crap. But there was one thing new...
BLOGS... We have this huge echo chamber of how bad things are FROM third hand people.
If you were to say, "ok so how bad are times for you?" Most would say, "oh not so bad, but its really bad for some other folks."
Well do that enough you start wondering who these "other" folks are...
BTW I did buy heavily in this stock market drop! And I am actually positive for my ENTIRE portfolio for the year!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
You can catch swine flue just by using twitter. Funny, with a name like that I always though that bird flue was the bigger risk.
(If it ever was cool that is)
Twitter is becomming the butt of jokes in the mainstream media this is not happening because the media are scared of Twitter. Its because Twitter has become a byword for ill informed content and mob mentality to the extent that I've heard stand up comedians can get a laugh out of mocking it.
This is not good for Twitter. It needs to reinvent itself fast or it will die a victim of its own success.
Is it really a bad thing if Twitter addicts wind up charging off a cliff in an ecstasy of pointless panic? This is Social Darwinism at its best. Everybody wins.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Have anyone caught any of the continuing coverage on all the major network today?? You don't think people will panic after watching those??
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
It's still not exactly new. Stupidities have occasionally spread out of control before too. E.g., the idea of curing everything with a magnet has happened centuries before blogs, and it spread world-wide anyway. And since we're talking the stock market, the crash of 1929 happened long before blogs.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
claiming that the (snail) mail is responsible for mail bombs. Twitter is just the media, it's still the people that cause a hype or a panic.
A media can make it easier for a panic to spread but would you charge the manufacturer of a knife if someone uses it to kill a person instead of preparing a filet?
Twitter is great for following and understanding this. @CDCemergency is the Center for Disease Control and what a great way to get the news straight from the swine's mouth, so so speak?
Far from being harmful to the panic, I would say that twitter is helping the panic considerably.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Governments ALWAYS have only reacted when forced to do so by people: to any crisis.
Whether its Katrina or SARS or insurgency in Iraq, the Government does NOT ever take proactive action until its too late or very late.
Twitter helps to give a swift kick in the Government's A$s to get it going quickly.
Unfortunately, the Government hates Twitter for its visibility. After all billions of tax payers dollars are shovelled out to FEMA and CDC for hogging the limelight.
Now, a small kid like Twitter which the government can't control or stifle comes along and steals the thunder.
The Government behaves like Monica Geller or FRIENDS fame: "You stole my thunder."
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
How is Twitter harmful to panic? Should we all use Twitter to guard ourselves against Swin-Flu Panic? Help, I need to sign up for twitter asap then!
I'm thinkin' you're thinkin' this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A45jv8uhZwo
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
It really does not scare me. Did you actually read the numbers and put them in context? Here, let me help you:
That means that in about seven years, throughout the expanse of the planet, 421 people have contracted the desease, of which about 60% died.
I'm not really impressed by that number. Sure, it means that the infected have higher than 50% chance of dying, but it also means that there is very little chance of becoming infected. Then, you also have to consider risk factors, mitigating circumstances, and geographical barriers; and it starts to look like one of those very deadly deseases that sound so scary and everybody knows their names, yet have little chance of ever knowing someone who contracted it, much less died of it.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Whoa there, cowboyneal. Any one else notice what this summary is all about? Twitter is terrible! It hurts! Twitter bad! Google, however, is goooood. Goooood gooooogle. Use Google, NOT Twitter! Slashvertising for the pandemic age?
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
1) Get a bunch of idiots who are all susceptible to the latest trend in whatever is marketed well enough.
2) Provide said idiots with a way to communicate thoughts that doesn't require thinking or processing what is being published for more than the key seconds it takes to type
3) Say OMGZVIUSSESandalsoPONIES
4) sell vaccine
5) ???
6) Profit!
Past tense for Tweet is Twat. All the article is saying is that there's a reason for that :)
"Sarcasm is for *winners*, Alan." - Charlie Harper (Two and a Half Men)
...is the new TV? (Starts at 1:16 min.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Seriously, this one guy named @CDCemergency seems to know what he's talking about.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Oh please for the love of all things holy, let it die!
I'm not a part of a conspiracy or the Illuminati.
Sounds mighty suspicious like somethin someone who actually IS involved in a government conspiracy might say.
Born in Charleston, SC to a Navy family.
Grew up in Indianapolis, IN at Catholic schools for 12 years.
Graduated from Virginia Tech, with two BAs, one in History and the other in English.
Spent one year in Key West, moved to Fairbanks, Alaska on January 14, 2008. When I arrived, the high temperature was -40F.
Working at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner newspaper.
Someone born and raised in the southern climate, with military family and religious upbringing, degrees in "telling you how it really happened" moves to Alaska on one of the coldest days in the year - so HE could decide "what folks need to stay informed"?
Luckily, I have had my tinfoil hat on or I might have missed that cleverly hidden link to your Fark profile.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Somebody who's wrong on the internets makes more people wrong on the internet!
[offtopic]
jesus, man. seems like one in every 10 news is twitter related. we should at least create its own icon for the articles :)
[/offtopic]
But what will Ashton Kutcher do then?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The sad thing is that Twitter search has "swine flu" as the #1 search. That said, some of the comments are pretty hilarious. One of the twits asked something like, "With this swine flu, is it okay to eat bacon? It did say it's been cured."
Let's not forget the political side of this story. There is a political side that utterly hates and detests the open nature of the internet. They are motivated to use situations like this to point out weaknesses, at a minimum. I remember when the internet "became the thing" in the mid/late 90s. This reporter was reporting about cookies (browser cookies). She was just so freaked out about how terrible that there was no control (aka government control) over cookies. The media and certain political establishments have been, from early on, feeling threatened by the internet since it's popularity became mainstream. I really feel this criticism of Twitter is motivated by that.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
Swine flu, or Twitter?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Siddhartha, is that you??
Well i agree that 140 chars can really scare people, it can't have anything to do with the media talking about this 24 hours a day, and saying just enough to scare you. For instance, COULD THIS BE A PANDEMIC, AND WILL YOU DIE? Find out at 4:00 The media has got to change their ways.
Twitter's actually good for swine flu panic, it's just that panic is generally considered bad.
Its sad, that only when something get out of control... we become aware of the wrong things our companys do in the third world
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/27/swine-flu-search-outbreak-source
How about the Randi 1 million dollar challenge?
Most preliminary tests are filmed (and everyone so far flunked the preliminaries badly) and looking at some of them, the requests weren't unreasonable, the test setup wasn't stacked against the claimant in any way, etc. I haven't seen any where it would even matter whether he's set to disprove those claims or not. Either you see auras through walls, or you don't. Either you can tell the history of an object by touch, or you don't. Either you can dowse or you don't. Those people just plain old didn't have the powers they claimed to have.
I mean, seriously, when you see a group of Australia's best dowsers manage to average 1 in 10 guesses right for 10 pipes out of which only 1 has water, it's hard to take it as anything else than dumb guesswork. I don't see how Randi's agenda can affect the fact than when asked to guess the right 1 in 10, those people averaged 1 right guess in 10.
Some are really just smart people. You don't have to be a psychic to do _some_ predictions. E.g., since we're in a sub-thread about an XKCD comic, as I was saying, you don't have to be a psychic to predict that in any scare there'll be surrealistically dumb posts on twitter. (Or generally on the Internet.)
Some are just lucky guesses. Due to the nature of random numbers and events, if you have enough people rolling a die, someone out there _will_ get 10 sixes in a row.
Some are just vague enough that they can be interpreted to apply to a few billion different people, and to a thousand fundamentally different events. See, horoscopes, for example. Take some horoscopes and randomly change the star signs, e.g., take the personality description or daily prediction for a pisces and give it to a libra, and see if they notice. Invariably it's just as good.
Actually, both the USA and the Russians _tried_ using all sorts of paranormal stuff. None of them actually delivered any useful results.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Am I the only one around here that doesn't use Facebook or Twitter?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
'Clearly, since only Mexicans die from it, while Americans and Canadians only get mildly ill, Swine Flu is a racially selective biological weapon developed by the CDC to solve the southern US border problem.' Beat that conspiracy theory.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I've heard enough panic on the mainstream news. At least Twitter is limited to 140 chars of panic at a time.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Harmful in that context means it's slowing down the panic, opposite to what's described in the summary.
Would it be possible to catch the flu in a movie theater? a crowded movie theater? a crowded movie theater filled with unwashed, unshaved gadget-bearing red shirt-wearing pointy-eared basement dwellers that have hardly been exposed to sunlight?
It's almost May 1, you know. Stop twitting, this is serious!
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Far too many people don't apply the 90% Bullsh*t Rule of the Internet (nowadays it's probably much higher). And yes there are people who read 140 characters and think what they just read is fact. The lesson to be learned here is go out and corroborate the facts for yourself.
Swine flu fears spread via Twitter! http://example.com/ ZOMG
RT: @obojbaljsb @ljsndljsd @ksahbksjbdv Swine flu spread via Twitter! http://example.com/
RT: @hbs9yho3u @9jbkjsrg @jkbs8h3g @kbhjs89 @kjbiugs3e Swine flu spreads via Twitter!
Swine flu killed my friend via Twitter!
Fail Whale.
In some cases, you need to use a communications technology that can distribute information faster than the phenomenon that you're combating. No doubt much of the "information" will be mis-information, but we must all remember that the medium does not negate the necessity of the user to think critically.
Those with any common sense know not to panic anyway. They should also know that Twitter is a social network site, not a reputatble source of important information. Therefore, I see that there is no problem.
lets just lay that foundation first.
Some time ago I offered my wife (who is by trade a Sociologist) $500 for a report that would help me understand the phenomenon of the growing popularity of Twitter. I waited a week than a month but in the end she did not produce the report, claiming that she could neither understand the phenomenon nor the purpose of the service.
But recently, when queried on the topic she admitted giving it some serious consideration and that she simply concluded that her findings were too obvious for a report. After long conversation (and many misunderstandings) I found her thoughts fascinating. I summarize them below:
The key theme is self expression.
It is important to switch to that mode while reading below points (it took me a while to understand my wife's point). We tend to perceive Internet as a medium of sharing and exchanging ideas. We forget that while people care about access to information, they care more about themselves. They want to be heard and understood.
The available tools for self expression are complicated.
My initial reaction to that claim was that there are plenty of tools and that they are getting better, more sophisticated, more intuitive and simpler to use. Over the past 15 years these tools offered more and more opportunities to self express. There were discussion lists, message boards, Geocities [sic], blogs, and finally social networks like Myspace where people could easily upload pictures, connect with friends and discuss topics. Now, we have Facebook with all of that and universe of applications created by independent developers.
But that is not the point.
To participate in message board discussion I have to read other posts and construct a message. (Some people might not like my message, disagree with it or even call me an idiot). To start a blog I must come up with a topic, to post new pictures I must acquire new pictures (hopefully of myself or exciting places I visited). Being on Myspace or Facebook is even more complicated as I must acquire friends, produce some sensible posts and share some cool pictures of myself. Not an easy task regardless of technology at hand.
Twitter solves the "nothing to say" problem of self expression.
Twitter with 'What are you doing right now' and 140 characters limit solves the problem for people who have nothing to say. (With that setup everyone is equally brilliant and idiotic.) There is no pressure to come up with something meaningful. This self expression is simple and obvious. It is a total self indulgent. ("Twit of the Year" kind of thing.) What am I doing right now? There is no way to make self expression simpler. There are no conversations, no critique, no meaning. There is a reason why there are no groups on Twitter. Twitter is not about particular topic or subject, it is all about me.
Twitter makes you feel important
There is a reason why PR of Twitter is focused more on celebrities than any campaign for any other Internet service has been before. You tweet and Britney Spears tweets. You send your thoughts into Al Gore's Internet with the same ease and quality - 140 words. No groups, no conversations, no topics. With growing popularity and media coverage it is even better. You send you thoughts to Twitter and then you see Twitter mentioned on TV.
This is the summary of my conversation with my wife.
I as an economist must add my thoughts on how they will make money. I will make three points:
Search is a Big Thing due to advertising money that come with it.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo search results are similar in quality (links to wikipedia).
Most people (not nerds) do not even know/remember that Google was the Yahoo search engine. What makes Google different now is the place it occupies in hearts and minds. Microsoft tried to attack that with advertising and failed miserably.
Twitter will attempt to establish a new paradigm that what matters in search is a real time search.
It will not attack Google at its c
. . . we the powers that be don't want the public to have tools that contradict whatever propaganda we might be pushing at the moment about the size and scope or lack thereof of an epidemic; the population is easier to control when we control the information they have access to. Don't panic, Americans.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Twitter is a fad. No better or worse than IM before it or email before that or cell phones before that or teenage girls on the home phone before that.
Can we please stop talking about it now?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Have you seen the first of Sprint's current snarky commercials about its 3G network, in which it visually depicts the Twitter network as a mob of little blue birds all chirping "me!"...?
I'd say that pretty much nails the whole narcissistic utility of Twitter.
...someone start this twumer (twitter rumor) I'm to lazy.
I can say [REDACTED] anytime I want!
This all takes me back to a conversation I had with my wife in the 1980's.
There were a multitude of 'Psychic Hotlines' scams being advertised on TV, and my wife asked what I thought about them.
My reply? "Well, if they are really 'pysichic', them why should I have to call them? Wouldn't they 'know' to call me?"
People often look for something that will fill an 'empty spot' in themselves.
The uneducated/unimaginative frequently turn to some form of mysticism to try and fill that void.
This has been happening since mankind started documenting history.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
There was an interesting and informative link in a story here on /. on Saturday.
Several Doctors from the CDC participated in the briefing. Here is a direct link to the briefing transcripts.
They talk about the genetics, and their testing results in the briefing:[from CDC link above]
"ANNE SCHUCHAT, MD, Interim Deputy Director for Science:[...]
[my emphasis]
Your earlier comment referring to the briefing started me looking for this...I had remembered reading about it this past weekend.
The briefing transcripts are an interesting read.
The CDC seems to be in fairly good form with this incident.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I wonder if the US infection vector being (allegedly) young college kids on 'Spring Break' had something to do with it? Young healthy people would shrug off desease better than a more homogeneous population.
*on a lighter note* ;-)
Besides, trying to gain a 'foothold' and survive the toxic environment inside a college kid on 'Spring Break' in Mexico? That must be one tough virus to survive long enough to back 'home'.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
If Google is calculating flu statistics based on searches, it should be possible to create a large spike in the flu trend calculations with a relatively small botnet over a relatively short period of time, say a week. Especially if one were careful enough to follow a real outbreak pattern with the searches.
I don't personally know which stocks to buy beforehand to make the most profit but I'm pretty sure with the right options strategy one could make a killing.
Even if no more flu cases are reported by the CDC, the sheer number of people looking at Google's data as an accurate if not official version of what is actually happening.
Homeopathy works, your just not gullible enough. If someone has a pain and a friend tells them to wear a magnet or copper or a pyramid on their head and they try it and their pain goes away, then they'll believe that works. From their perspective, it actually does work, so how can you argue that it doesn't. You can try to tell them they're gullible and more susceptible to the placebo effect, but more then likely they will only cling harder to their beliefs.
I consider myself to be pro-science, but I see too many people who are aggressively anti-anything-not-100%-approved-to-be-scientific while ignoring some other piece of science (like the placebo effect).
from the article:
"it can prime your immune system"
no, there is no such thing as priming your immune system or boosting your immune system, or Maximizing you immune system.
If you don't understand why, STFU.
"your immune system may be far more capable of fighting off a more lethal variant that could turn up later."
again, STFU.
"turbocharged swine flu "
WTF? STFU.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Except it's wrong.
I don't sue twitter as a 'Me' I use iotas an general gathering of spikes in global events.
I post to twitter becasue It's an interesting way to maintain societal niches.
I also enjoy reading what certain people re up to. Except when the suddenly start posting a play be play tweet of the damn hockey gamer. Will Wheaten, I'm looking at you.
Plus, if someone doesn't post anything interesting, I don't follow.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If the swine flu kills off the douche bags who spend their lives Twittering, I'll consider the flu has done a fine job of cleaning up the gene pool.
While we're at it, let's wipe out the losers who play World of
Warcraft.
I'm sick of human scum.
Yes, that e-mail I got telling me that swine flu must be genetically engineered because it combines DNA from pigs and humans; that was really well considered and fact-checked.
What exactly will Twitter manage that a lack of free public medicine in the US won't? There is a whole breeding ground for a virus of people who won't be able to afford to go to a doctor, won't have cash to buy medicines and have lived in medical ignorance for their whole lives.
Pig flu is obviously going to go ape shit on the poor and the US will be responsible for an international pandemic.
The homophobia of a President gave the world AIDS through inaction, now the lack of a public health system will give us the flu.
And look where this came from... a country enslaved by American corporations looking for cheap labor and slack environmental policies.
Like drrr Twitter is a real serious issue.