On a related note, I'm grateful that you leave the comment section open after your posts, and bummed that Sean Nelson does not.

You know Dan, you're old enough remember life before social media. Weren't your relationships with family, friends, and acquaintances richer and more satisfying in time before social media? After the initial burst of excitement in connecting with people, social media seems at best like an empty exercise and at worst an emotional drain. When you first put it down, it will seem a bit strange, and you'll be tempted to keep looking, but soon enough, you'll hardly be able to remember the time when you were scanning what people had to say on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever, and then you'll wonder why you ever spent time on it in the first place.

@2: Fry and Laurie. Blackadder. An Emmy award winner. But in the age of the internet, he may be best known for the presently apt:

It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what.

^^That guy.

Twitter is only good as a one-many communication method. So it only works for celebrities and such in the first place.

Follow the right people/orgs and never ever tweet. (Easier said than done, right?). Mine is an interesting little nerdy news feed; that is all. I know why your feed is different. I get it. But it seems like twitter is the social media device that is most immune to abuse and manipulation.

On Twitter, you can hear from anyone and everyone. That's the magic of it.

Future history students are going to wonder how anyone could think that was a good idea.

Pithy, succinct comment is the purview (if not provenance) of the gay man--reference Gore Vidal.

Dear Celebrities: If you consistently put out quality work NO ONE WILL GIVE THE SLIGHTEST SHIT THAT YOU DO NOT TWEET.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I've never even looked at Twitter or Facebook in my life.

Not even once.

Dan. Going to sleep reading Twitter? A good book is what you need.
Long, informative, imaginative, sentences.. are much better to take you off to dream land.

I wish more celebs would not Tweet. I get sick of seeing headlines in other media about what they're Tweeting. I am so not interested it what celeb A thinks about celeb B, or underwear, or vegan cheese.

@10 - I think you, me, and my luddite wife may be the last ones standing.

Even my mother begs me to join FB - she needs to share those cat videos with accelerated ease, see? With social media, the diminishing returns of technology really couldn't be more apparent.

@14 best comment of the thread.

I think Twitter should progressively diminish any user's ability to tweet at other people with the increasing number of 'blocks' that account has received. After (x) blocks, then they can't tweet at someone they are not following; after (2x) block, they can't tweet at someone who isn't also following them; after (3x) blocks they must ask permission to follow a new person; etc.