Surely, the End Times Must be Upon Us
Some people look for signs of the apocolypse in politics, prophecy and biblical references. But for writers, the end of the world may, in fact, coincide with the birth of “twitterature.” It’s time for prayer, people.
At the risk of sounding like a scary old bag lady standing on the street corner with one of those “The End Is Near” signs, I really must take umbrage with the latest trend toward “twitterature.” Recently it has been reported that a group of college students is working on taking the great classics of literature and boiling them down to 20 tweets or less. As if the titanic achievements of literature could be boiled down into a few bald plot points… Is this what technology has reduced us to?
Words matter. At times of great change, words have shocked nations into awareness. What if some of the great speeches of our time were put into tweets?
Martin Luther Kings I Have a Dream Speech:
“I was thinking people of all colors should get along better.”
Ronald Reagan’s Eulogy to the Challenger Space Shuttle Crew:
“The crew is dead. Bummer. They’ll be missed.”
FDR’s famous “we have nothing to fear” speech:
“Depression sucks. But we’ll get through it.”
Great writing is about more than its core ideas. It’s about great ideas, wrapped up in language so beautiful, so compelling, that it makes people stop, think and believe. I, for one, think a professor should be handing those students a punishment of some kind. Shouldn’t someone tell their mommy? Don’t these poor children know that to rape these great works will surely earn them a lifetime of hauntings by Edgar Allen Poe?
To be fair, not everyone is using twitter for evil. Some writers, in fact, have started writing collaborative stories, one tweet at a time. Think of it as a type of plot based haiku for the technologically savvy. It’s an interesting experiment in brevity and storytelling. A nice writing exercise. But literature, it is not. Lets hope it never is. As human beings, I hope we never get so enamored with the online world that that we can no longer sit still long enough to enjoy a good read.
June 29th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
While I don’t think Twitter should replace great literature or poignant eulogies, I think the 140 character limit is a great challenge to writers, especially in advertising. In a :30 spot or a print ad, you can’t use a lot of words. Knowing how to pare down what you need to say so you can express it concisely and clearly is a great skill that using Twitter can help encourage.