Friday, January 29, 2010

Flttr: Th Nw Wy t Blg

“Flutter”: The New Twitter” takes a satirical stab at the “micro blogging” site, Twitter. As I watched the video and giggled at the jokes, I couldn’t help but agree with its argument that Twitter is a silly way to communicate because of the limits it imposes. Twitter’s character maximum of 140 seems to be far too concise for some people to post their thoughts or activities, so Flutter pokes fun at this limit and reduces it to 26 characters. I found this to be the most humorous yet important aspect of the parody because it displayed how abbreviated and simplistic communication has become as a result of micro-blogging.

Other telling components of the Flutter video are the iPhone application that tracks one’s location and the “FlutterEyes” that provide a constant stream of others’ updates. These features illustrate the argument that Twitter users are continuously updating their statuses and spending time looking at others’. The iPhone application was entertaining because, strikingly often, people do choose to continuously inform others of what they are up to, even when the average, busy person couldn’t care less. The FlutterEyes feature shows how people can easily become consumed by following others’ lives through their miniscule updates. All in all, the Flutter video is a well-done mockumentary that clearly exposes how Twitter has both revolutionized and minimized communication.

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1 comment:

  1. Sharif AnousJanuary 31, 2010 at 10:49 PM

    I really like how you pointed out that the main argument of the Flutter mockumentary was that twitter has minimized communication. The earliest signs of this are in email and text messaging language, where abbreviations have replaced words and phrases, and this was without a limit on the number of characters. now with twitter only allowing 140 characters per tweet, it has taken the minimization of communication to the next level. a level that is worthy of mocking. due to the decrease in amount of information allowed per tweet, people now start to tweet more and more about irrelevant and insubstantial things. like the iphone app in the flutter video.

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