Teawithle tweets.

I confess, before online news I tried twitter – and I hated it. With one swift glance I decided it was something to fear, something that worked against its user rather than with them.

I couldn’t understand so many parts of it – how to write to someone, how to see if someone wrote to me, and what was with these damn hashtags??

The worst part was keeping within the 140 character word limit. I’m a confessed babbler, and deliberately go the long way about saying things to create a dramatic effect. A story to a friend about a date, for example, will consist in carefully dissecting every detail: “well first he picked me up, in a sky blue lancer I think it was?

Anyway, he was wearing jeans and a top. Ok so he knocked on the door – three times I think it was – which was really cute and showed he’s not too persistent…” as you can see, my friends get everysinglebit of information, whether they like it or not.

Being blunt and to the point is something men are much better at – while my girlfriend’s voice messages often consist with a 10 minute analysis of what they’re doing at the moment and why, their messages consist of “Its Darren. Call me.”

So when I was required to face twitter again for online news this semester, I approached it with trepidation. Staring blankly back at the “write something in 140 words or less” tag, I begun to type, each time getting the “wrong answer” message from twitter – each sentence was way too long.

It was annoying for me, because shortening my sentences meant that my tweet wasn’t as funny or witty as it could be.

But, gradually over the months I got the hang of it, and now I’m shortening everything, even my neverending stories. Now even my in-person stories can be to the point: “date was worst. Had #motherissues”.