The Year of the Tweet

I conducted my own impromptu poll of those described by me as “The Thumbers” – those people who successfully communicate through electronic devices by the use of one thumb on each hand, used singularly or in tandem, with reckless abandon.
 

As a casting director, what I do for a living is called profiling. My question posed to all who are part of the “thumbing society” is, what do you derive as being so pleasurable about what you call “tweeting?”

• Why is it called a tweet?

• Why not call it a burp, or a slurp; or what about stealing a baseball term and call your tweet a bunt?

•  Is a bad tweet a possible foul ball? You might call it a charm. In that way, when some person not in your “thumbing crowd” inquires about what you’re up to, you could reply by saying, “I’m charming.”

There was a time period when the term “Thumbing” had to do with hitchhiking, or hitching a ride with somebody.

Carrying on, whether some like it or not, in my era of baseball an umpire who threw a player out of the game was described as having given him the thumb.

As a soldier going off to battle, his friends and relatives might have offered him thumbs up. By and large, thumbs have always been a congenial digit. If a buffoon gives another buffoon a digital expletive it will usually be a finger other than a thumb.

And…speaking of thumbs, during this latest industrial travel gamut of mine, I familiarized myself with the art of the tweet. My first discovery was that a tweet must never be confused with anything remotely considered an art form. If Rembrandt were alive today, I doubt if he would ever consider doing a tweet. 

For sure, he used his full strong right arm, as opposed to his thumbs when he created his masterpieces. The same would definitely apply to George Gershwin. You be the judge, ten talented fingers compared to two thumbs usually being supported in one’s lap as they perform their tweeting.

According to reports, everyone in the world is a tweeter.  Come to think of it, tweet must be international because there is no such word in most of the languages of the world. So where in the name of you-know-what did the name tweet come from? 

Well, I looked it up, and now I feel really dumb about the whole thing.

It did come from a bird chirping. The logo for the company running this worldwide event actually has a bird designating what they do. The number of tweets being sent each and every day of the week totals in the millions, and they predict it will be billions in short order.

I wonder if it would be a polite gesture to walk up unannounced to a stranger, and enquire if they tweet? Would they indignantly offer, “Go tweet yourself?”