Response to "Flutter: The New Twitter"

The video “Flutter: The New Twitter” is a satire that disapproves of the popular “microblog”, Twitter. The target audience of this video is the internet users, specifically those who are skeptical about Twitter. In particular, the video focuses on the 140 word limit of the posts of the Twitter, or the “tweets”. By presenting Flutter, the mockery version of Twitter, which allows the users to “flap” in 26 characters maximum, the video criticizes how internet users tend to shorten messages to impractical extent in the hope of transferring messages more rapidly. By applying very sarcastic tone throughout, for example, by saying “… people don’t have time to twitter… bombarded by… like hundreds of characters that you have to read,” as well as showing silly actors that seem to appraise Flutter, video makes its argument: Twitter is ridiculous and unnecessary.

However, if you watch the video more carefully and critically, you may question the legitimacy of the argument made and discover that it is highly one-sided. The video assumes that the Twitter users tweet for no practical reasons other than such to tell “watching project runway in my underwear.” Nevertheless, Twitter is undoubtedly accepted and used widely, thus there should be sound reasons for the popularity. Twitter definitely helps people around the world connect to each other and stay up-to-date on any current issues. By providing this network, the users are given chances to bond with people that share common interests and may find further learning opportunities. Despite these evident advantageous aspects of Twitter, the video presents limited and biased views, and is preoccupied with being humorous. Moreover, the video gets too extreme towards the end by introducing “Shutter,” a more condensed version of Flutter.

“Flutter: The New Twitter” is intended to criticize Twitter, but its preoccupation to be humorous and presentation of neither critical nor objective, but rather blatantly biased views can lead the audience to simply laugh off and not to reflect on Twitter. Twitter is not aimed at seriously educating people or fostering formal writing. There is no need to be so cynical about the social networking website that has no seemingly imperative harm.