Think back to the first football game you couldn’t be home for and taped on your VCR. You were out with the family, enjoying the fall weather, not even slightly concerned about someone coming along and shouting the score to you. No worries, right?
Then cell phones came along. Your buddy, unknowingly would call you to tell you about the amazing last drive and ruin the whole day. So we learned, don’t take calls when we are taping games.
Then Twitter & Facebook (etc.) came along. We wanted to update our friends and family to what we were up to, check in to a locatoin, or just waste a minute or two to stalk our friends. But of course, we can’t do that now because your friends will be on there talking about the game too. So we have been forced to go what has been called, Twitter-Dark.
Twitter-Dark is such a odd concept, isn’t it? You mean I’m supposed to PUT AWAY all my glorious technology? Not use Facebook or Twitter for several hours at a time? Not check my email, listen to my voice mails, NOTHING?
Yes, if you don’t want things ruined for you, that is.
Which takes me to this past Sunday night, the LOST finale. Many of my Facebook & Twitter friends had to send out the message that they were going Twitter-Dark. They didn’t want to hear spoilers about Jack & Kate, they didn’t want to hear that the smoke monster was really a dinosaur or that the island was really a spaceship that moved throughout the universe, not an island that moved throughout the ocean.
So the people that went Twitter-Dark enjoyed their finale of LOST (or didn’t enjoy it, if that was the case) without looking at their computer, cell phone, iPad or anything of the sort that had to do with online interaction. A hard task, I know – but just think if someone had asked you 7 years ago to not look at your cell phone for a few hours… would it have been as difficult as now? I shudder at the thought of not having my phone in my hand for more than 30 minutes. I sometimes roll over in my sleep and play a quick game of solitaire.
Going Twitter-Dark is a tough task to accomplish, it takes hard work, determination, concentration & a strong will. Like training for a marathon tough. Maybe it should be an Olympic sport? I’ll start the push for it, do I have your backing?
It’s preposterous to think that in this day in age that technology would actually RUIN our entertainment, not enhance it – but it does, sometimes. So bottom line, don’t check my personal Twitter during the football season, I’ll be screaming like a ex-sailor gone truck driver about how awful my Cleveland Browns are, but you didn’t need to go Twitter-Dark to be spoiled on that one, did you?
