Use Twitter Wisely Or You Might Gonna Lose Your Real Friends

The overwhelmingly annoying trending topics.

If you are one of twitter's users then you probably have been noticing that there's something odd. Take a look at the left side bar and you will know what it is.

It's the TRENDING TOPICS! If you set your trending topics preference to "worldwide" then you will find that the topics that’s been trending are all useless (sometimes freaky). Some of them are in Indonesian and it’s just embarrassing. Why? Because most of twitter’s (hyper) active user are teenagers. And if the trending topics are in Indonesian, then it means that most of Indonesian teenagers don’t have anything to do but hyperactively tweet about tons of crap which also means they are freak. Again, why? Because if they’re busy at school, doing homework at home, active in organizations, hang out with (real) friends, doing something useful for themselves – then their mind and time would be occupied with all of those activities. But then again, they have their time occupied tweeting. Why? Because they probably aren’t very sociable, geek, nerd, or don’t have any friends to hang out with. So instead of going out, they spend their times tweeting and use all of the trending topics in order to get virtual friends on twitter.

I have a friend in campus that I’ve only known for a few months and we ride home together sometimes, let’s just call her Marissa (this isn’t her real name). A couple days ago when we were walking down the main hall from the north side to the south side, almost everyone called my name and I had to politely stop for one minute or two just to say hi and ask how they’re doing. And they were spreading along the hallway so it took almost twenty minutes for me to literally get into the end of it.

Marissa looked surprise and asked me, “Are they your friends? How could you know so many people?”

I whispered, “The truth is, I only know a few of them. I know some of their faces but I don’t know their names. As for the rest, I don’t even know their name neither recognize their faces but I was just trying to be polite so I made a small talk. I’ll memorize their faces then secretly ask my closest friends what are their names if we meet again later.” Then we laughed.

Marissa can’t really mingle with people. I notice that because we have several classes together. Every time I step into the classroom, people are sitting around their friends but she’ll sit alone and play with her blackberry. No one talks to her unless if they need to borrow something. So if I choose a seat next to my closed friends, she’ll move next to me. God knows that I can’t stand being in one place for too long, so I usually just go around the classroom and chat or gossiping with the others until the class begin, but Marissa just sit and busy with her blackberry (tweeting). I followed her the other day and she has a lot of friends on twitter, she looks very popular on twitter.

Sad fact, isn't it? I’d rather have tons of friends in my real life than in the virtual web. What’s the point of having plenty of virtual friends if we don’t have one real friend who can physically be there for us to share everything with?

The funny thing is that I don’t have much followers or virtual friends on twitter, so I just tweet some random things about anything and barely have a virtual conversation on twitter.

Back to the trending topics’ craziness, I am embarrassed and pretty sad for the fact that most Indonesian teenagers can’t stand being away from their smart phones for more than a minute. I actually had a blackberry last year but it broke so I just use ordinary phone now. Believe it or not, since it costs much to surf the internet with my ordinary phone, my GPA is getting higher than when I use Smartphone. Why? Because instead of checking on emails or tweets on my phone, I spend my time reading books, doing homework, and mingling with my friends.

A wise woman once told me: “I don’t use a Smartphone because I already am smart.”

I like my ordinary phone much more than I used to love my blackberry, because this ordinary phone brings me closer to my real friends. 

What about you? Do you have the same thought as I do?