Newsflash: Tweets Are Pointless!

This just in! According to a recent analysis, 40.55 percent of the tweets flooding into the Twitterverse can be classified as "pointless babble."

Those of you who have not yet hopped on the Twitter bandwagon should probably consider that before signing up. As an avid Twerp (or whatever the singular form of "Tweeple" is), I can substantiate the above statistic. In fact, I probably contribute to it more often than not.

Unfortunately, the study didn't delve into why so many tweets are riveting and timely observations such as "I'm eating a sandwich," "It's so hoooooottttt outside," and "I really didn't want to wake up this morning. Le sigh."

Fortunately, I have the answer: There simply isn't enough of you to go around.

You're not that interesting. Neither am I. And the pressure to craft engaging blog posts, G-chat statuses, Facebook statuses, and Twitter statuses only reinforces that fact. Sure, we care about what we're having for lunch, but no one else really does, at least not all the time and via six different social network notifications.

But still, we soldier forward, self-publishing our comings, goings and clever bon mots to our world of online "followers," "friends" and "buddies." Do they care? I guess it doesn't really matter. The life of these status updates is almost non-existent anyway, with Twitter and Facebook feeds taking their cue from the weather in Chicago: Don't like what you see? Just wait five minutes.

The real question is, why are we spending so much time on other people's so-called pointless babble? If you're reading this right now, I guess you don't have the answer, either...

Just so this post doesn't seem completely negative, I'll close with a sweet little video that is social networking-related, but doesn't have much to do with the above discussion. It does contain a ukulele though, and that's reason enough for you to watch it. Fair warning: The song will get rather lodged in your head.