It's Twitter's Fault!

Twitter shall be the death of us.  

Extreme?  Yeah, okay.  A bit extreme.  But hey, you have to agree that the arrival of Twitter on the scene a decade or so ago has dramatically changed our interpersonal discourse, right?

Just think:  hardly a day goes by where some politician or celebritard or actor/actress gets all pissed off about something or other and fires up his or her (or its - gotta' remember California, doncha' know) little twitter-er-er.  He/she/it then conjures up a bunch of inane crap and sends a little tweet message off into the ether.  It then offends nearly everyone and the witless bozo who sent it has to then apologize and grovel profusely.  And then loses his/her/its job or movie deal or elected office and has to move to Siberia.

Oh wait.  That's in Russia.  Can't do that.  We're told we have to hate Russia. 

But I submit that the fatal flaw in Twitter is that it offers the chance to forego contemplation and just go off half-cocked and say whatever's on your mind at the time.*  And many do.  Verrrrrry many do.  Behold:

     *  There are 262 million international Twitter users, representing 79% of all accounts.

     *  There are 14.1 million Twitter users in the United Kingdom.

     *  There are 48.65 million active U.S. Twitter users.

     *  42% of American Twitter users Tweet daily (wow!).

     *  That represents some 22% of all U.S. adults (wow, again!).

     *  44% of active U.S. users are 18 - 24 years-old.

     *  36% of active U.S. Twitter users are Democrats, only 21% republicans (maybe because they have to work?).

     *  Most prolific U.S. users are women who Tweet about politics (10%!).

     *  The average U.S. user Tweets only 2 x per month.

     *  The most active U.S. users average more than 138 x tweets per month.

And perhaps the two most important statistics to be gleaned from my exhaustive research:

     *  80% of all U.S. Tweets come from only 10% of all U.S. account holders.

     *  And fully 12% of all Americans get their news, international, national and local, from Twitter!

There's an old axiom in business:  80% of your business will come from only 20% of your customers.  And so it is in life.  In this case, 80% of tweets once again come from only 10% of all account holders.  And this makes my point.  Only a tiny fraction of our Country seems to be tweeting, and a much tinier percentage of those tweeters seem to be demanding all sorts of political, economic, social and environmental change.  

So let's take a look at what we've learned here today.  In other words, only a very few people are banging the drum.  A collection of predominantly young, mostly un - or underemployed, overwhelmingly Liberal and likely under-informed voices are getting inordinate attention.  The twitterer-er-er's tail wagging the Nation's dog, so to speak.  And I, for one, have grown weary of a few perennially offended, under-informed, hyperbolic weenies demanding to decide how we, the vast majority, should vote and eat and travel and live and love.  

Count me among those who lives to defy those who just want to be left alone to live my life... 

*  The exact reason I refuse to open a Twitter account.