Watching Your Friends Drink Kool-Aid

You know, I don't have a Twitter account. I never really see the utility in it; always seems like just a bunch of white noise. People who trumpet it as an innovation usually point to its power for news dissemination, for example when the East Coast experienced an earthquake earlier this year. Others contend that Twitter was instrumental in the Arab Spring uprisings, helping to organize protests. That's a fallacious argument to me, because people have rioted and protested for hundreds of years before there was Twitter. It's just that before Twitter, people actually had to talk to each other in order to spread the word.

But for me Twitter does have one utility, namely it allows me to watch the slow decay of my peers as they helplessly fall prey to the consumerist lifestyle they've come to believe matters. I should add that the example tweets I use aren't meant to be attacks on individuals (these people are acquaintances), simply I used them because they prove my point and you people just put it out there in public so everyone can see. Theoretically I'm helping you.

There's this epidemic, and Freddie nails it, of competitive consumerism in my generation. Everyone's drinking the Kool-Aid of a capitalistic culture that says "the herd is happy" and that somehow you must fit in while simultaneously rising above everyone else in your individuality and innovative consumerism. And so you end up with a massive, generational flocking effect...everyone tries to stay as close together as possible, and a tiny perturbation - new, hip, pointy-toed shoes - causes a ripple where the whole flock massively pivots to follow that first-turning bird. And while the seemingly mindless collective flock of individuals sticks tightly together, they tweet back and forth about it.

I hate to tell you this, but your ability to pass an online quiz that proves you can tell a good pino from a bad cab really doesn't matter to anyone. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You found a 100-point cab for $16 at so-and-so's liquor store? No one cares. No one. In fact the statistically proven, temporal subjectivity of the 100-point score renders it worthless too. Your groupon deal for unlimited yoga for $30 might be impressive to you, but you're basically just wasting electricity retweeting it...everyone who would want that deal would have to already be signed up to Groupon (and already have seen the deal) or have to join Groupon to get the deal (in which case they'd immediately see the deal) so you've really done nothing but brainlessly advertise for Groupon for free. Good work.

Someday, not too far in the future, one of these people will realize things like "I actually didn't really like HealthRidge Fitness Club" but they won't tweet "ignore my tweet from three months ago. #hindsightis20/20" The 100-point cab they spilled all over the twittersphere will be long forgotten, and the cheaper, lower-ranked wine they enjoy even more won't cause them to retroactively go back and tweet "100-point wine was overrated by 7 points IMHO #iwasshortsighted". You're not going to see a tweet from the above person "@RoadID I never really use this thing, had it 5 years and never needed it, why did I waste my money?"
Because retroactive self-abasement goes against the competitive consumerist's nature. You can't look back in regret because to do so would admit weakness in prescience. And it is the illusion of indefatigable prescience that powers the competitive consumerists of my generation. It is only boldly forward, boldly onward for the competitive consumerist, in whichever direction the flock takes them.

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