Twitter Is a Brain-Eating Parasite, and I Love It

Kathryn Schulz explains her mixed feelings about the network
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 8, 2013 12:04 PM CST
Twitter Is a Brain-Eating Parasite, and I Love It
Twitter signage is draped on the facade of the New York Stock Exchange Thursday.   (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Twitter's strong debut on the stock market has lots of people pontificating on the cosmic relevance of 140 characters or less, but one column in particular getting lots of attention is by author Kathryn Schulz at Daily Intelligencer. She recounts how she skeptically joined in 2010, gradually became "addicted," and now finds herself thinking in tweets. She covers the good: "Collectively, the people I follow on Twitter—book nerds, science nerds, journalists, the uncategorizably interesting—come pretty close to my dream community."

And the bad: It is "endlessly distracting, endlessly social," which takes a toll on her productivity as a writer. She sometimes thinks that Twitter is "a parasite, and that I am one of its hosts, so effectively has it hacked my brain." The piece isn't a condemnation, though, it's more Schulz wrestling with "how Twitter has changed the way it feels for me to think, write, and simply exist in today’s world." The full column is worth a read. (More Twitter stories.)

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