Patroclus, the society hostess of Web 2.0, has introduced me to twitter.com, one of those sites that balances precariously on that narrow rail between "Zeitgeist-defining" and "stupid". The deal is that users simply key what they are doing righthererightnow into a box, and then see what everyone else is doing at the same time. It's like that October 17 mass diary experiment writ large. Or maybe blogging for people with exceedingly short attention spOld joke. Sorry.
The effect - sorry, the "user experience" - seemed oddly familiar, but it took a while before I could place it. It's like that episode of Torchwood when Toshiko has a pendant that lets her know what everyone around her is thinking; she puts it on while she's in a pub, and gets thrown back against the wall by the sheer force of people's deep, dark musings, all spilling out like a white noise of frustration, lust and banality.
Except that, after using twitter, you don't automatically get to have a frenzied bout of lesbian rudeness with someone who used to be in EastEnders.
Well, I didn't.
