7 ways Twitter is destroying the world

Can you squeeze your thoughts into 140 characters or less? Millions of people across the world attempt to do so on a daily basis, much to the dismay of their bored followers. Don’t get me wrong, Twitter is great—it lets you share your thoughts with the world in an unprecedented way. But it’s also destroying the world, and here’s how.

7 It’s buggy as hell
You might have noticed some weird bugs on Twitter: Retweets don’t show up, tweets get duplicated, and sometimes messages even just disappear. This is all pretty sloppy and embarrassing for one of the biggest Web sites on the Internet, but the worst bug of all is one that Twitter calls a “known issue” – sometimes your private messages will appear as public tweets. So when your girlfriend leaves you because she sees that you’ve been sending nasty sex messages to Wanda Sykes or when you get fired from your job because somebody saw your racial slur-laced message to a friend, you’ll know Twitter’s bugs are to blame.

6 #hornyforjustin
Last week, “#hornyforjustin” was a Twitter trending topic. Justin Bieber, that is. The sixteen-year-old pop sensation who inspired the blog Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber. I have nothing against Mr. Bieber, but if I had a 12 year-old daughter and she was tweeting about how horny she was, she wouldn’t be allowed to use the Internet again until she turned twenty-five. This is scary, disturbing, and a terrible double-standard – if guys across the world were tweeting #hornyformiley we’d all be arrested.

5 You can’t block people
So you’re the Mayor of Whole Foods, you’re listening to Jason Derulo, and your cat just died. I couldn’t care less, but I can’t take your incessant rambling off my Twitter homepage without unfollowing you, which would be like saying we’re not friends anymore. Unlike Facebook’s news feed, there’s no option to stop seeing somebody’s pointless posts, which has led to growing resentment between countless people. How many friendships have been ruined because Twitter made people see each other in a brand new light? How many wars will break out because of the seeds of hatred that Twitter sows every single day? We need to be able to follow people without seeing their tweets, for the sake of humanity.

4 Fake deaths
Twitter is often a source of breaking news, because it’s so accessible. So when “Bill Cosby died” is a trending topic, a lot of people assume it’s true, even when it’s just a big practical joke. It might be no big deal to spread rumors about Bill Cosby, but what if a group of people decided to fake that someone else died? Remember, World War I started because Franz Ferdinand was assassinated — who’s to say that some death in the Middle East couldn’t start World War III? Maybe your “Hosni Mubarak died” joke won’t be so funny.

3 You HAVE to use it
If you work in the media, marketing, advertising, entertainment, writing, or one of many other industries, you probably have to use Twitter. This is unfortunate, because most of us wind up using Twitter far more than we actually work. And when people don’t do work, companies suffer, the economy fails, and eventually America crumbles. All because of Twitter.

2 People judge you on the number of followers you have
Okay, so I only have 56 right now. Maybe I don’t have hundreds or thousands of followers, but I’m still cool, right? Right? Please follow me. I’m so lonely.

1 Every single tweet lasts forever
That’s right, every single tweet anyone ever makes is added to a giant database in the Library of Congress. “Whatever,” you’re probably saying. “Who cares if my tweets are saved forever?” That thirteen-year-old who’s #hornyforjustin might care in a few years when she’s applying for colleges. Same with the guy who accidentally left his account open on one of his friends’ computers and tweeted about being a homosexual in some very explicit ways. When every single thing we write is preserved for posterity, we all have skeletons in our closets… so be careful what you tweet.

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