to tweet or not to tweet? a tragedy

Jason Massie recently posted something that I find both a little funny and a little scary; he called out Adam Machanic for posting something mildly derogatory about Twitter.  Brent Ozar joined the fray as well.  This gets a little confusing (in a soap-opera gossipy kind of way), so let me break it down in some sort of sequence of posts:

• Ajarn (a guy I don’t know) wrote a post that says “It’s not that I think that Twitter is evil or utterly banal… it’s just that I couldn’t seem to make it fit my life very well.”
• Adam Machanic (a guy I’ve met a couple of times at DevTeach and on the newsgroups) responded to the above post saying “Finally, a voice of reason with regard to this thing! Thanks for sharing… “
• Jason Massie (a guy I met on twitter) then calls out Adam: “So I challenge Adam and you if you are not on twitter to follow these people for a month with a real client and post your status.”
• Brent Ozar (another guy I met on twitter, but then met in “meatspace”) agrees with Jason, but this where it gets interesting: “Twitter is what you make of it… Saying Twitter sucks is like saying the web sucks, or that music sucks, or that talking sucks.  It just indicates that you’re unclear on the concept. “

OK, the funny part is that I know enough about these guys and the subject that they’re talking about to even get involved enough to want to wite a post.  I feel like I’m in high school again, talking about so-and-so who kissed such-and-such at somebody’s party and yada, yada…  The scary part is where a conversation about a social networking tool went from “it doesn’t work for me” to “if you don’t like it, you haven’t tried it” to “if you don’t like it, you must think it sucks, and I must defend its honor: DRAW YOUR SWORD, SIR!”

Sorry, for a second there I went all Knight’s Tale on you (or was it Princess Bride?).  Anyway, it’s possible that I could have missed part of the conversation.  Adam could have said “twitter sucks, and you tweeters are all a bunch of losers”, but I don’t think so.  I certainly didn’t read it that way.  And it’s not that I don’t find value in twitter, but I have to admit that I lean more towards the camp of “meh; it’s fun, but I’m not sure I have time for it.”  I tweet occasionally, and in fact I have WordPress set up to tweet when I post, so if you’re following me on twitter, you’re probably reading this post because of it.  (Does that qualify as irony?  I sucked at high school English, and never really understood the concept.)

To be fair, Brent’s advice on using twitter is good; if you have time, follow the right people, and it won’t suck.  What surprises me is that an invisible line seems to have been drawn in the sand between those who tweet and those who do not.  That’s a little scary; twitter is after all, just one tool in the socially aware DBA’s life, and while it can be useful for some, it can be annoying as well.  What scares me is the pressure to tweet, or to use facebook, or to use a gravatar, or to use the next best thing coming down the pipe.  Where does it stop?  I’m already spending excessive hours hooked to a PC; at what point do I reach geek nirvana?

To the non-tweeters: If you haven’t tried it, try it before knocking it (kind of like broccoli); if you still don’t like it, don’t let anybody try to force you into using it.  Just stay connected to the community in other ways.

To the twitter-lovers: don’t assume that people who don’t tweet hate it or don’t understand it.  Just go back to tweeting, but find ways to build community in other ways.