The video “Flutter: The New Twitter” is essentially an attack on Twitter’s presence as a micro-blog in today’s society. The “creators” of Flutter mock the shortness of tweets by attempting to sell a site that limits users to merely 26 characters per post, the size of the English alphabet, rather than 140 characters as in Twitter. The exaggeration of post length is further demonstrated when users take out all the vowels from every tweet or convert Facebook and other sites’ updates to Flutter sized memos. Additionally, this video argues that Twitter is far overused. This is exemplified by the invention of a fake iPhone application that automatically updates your Flutter account when you change locations. Another example of this exaggeration occurs when users wear new glasses that discreetly display Flutter posts on a scrolling bar along the bottom of the lenses for users to read while they go about their lives. Overall, the invention of Flutter aims to show that people are far too obsessed with the short blog posts that formulate Twitter.
I believe that the video is far too extreme in its argument. Though sarcasm and exaggeration were their tactics for getting their point across, I think these methods conveyed the wrong message to viewers. The video assumes that its audience is aware of Twitter’s presence and is relatively informed as to how it functions. However, if someone who knew nothing about Twitter were to view it, they will likely be misled about how many users are frequently tweeting and the purpose behind the short posts. After reading the article “Inside Twitter: An In-Depth Look Inside the Twitter World”, we know that only a small percentage of Twitter users make up the majority of activity. The majority of people post less than one update per day, and some post none at all. With this knowledge in mind, I feel it is inaccurate to demonstrate people using Twitter in nearly every aspect of their life. Many people are constantly on the go, and these brief updates whenever one has time are the ideal way to get points across in today’s busy world.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Great job Michelle!
ReplyDeleteI liked how you began by analyzing the evidence Flutter used in its argument, and then explicitly stated your opinion in the second paragraph. You supported your argument in the second paragraph with the article we read, which really helped validate and add credibility to your opinion. Really good job!
Your integration of twitter and the Twitter article was a very good contrast. I too felt that the video was being very critical of twitter as a whole, since it is true that only a small percentage of users make up the vast amount of tweeting interaction. Even while everyone is "on the go" and has a quick paced lifestyle, not everyone is such an avid user of twitter that would lead to their degradation to social sites like "Flutter"
ReplyDelete