Anti-Social Media?

Yes you learn something every day, but how much of it would you rather not learn? Today, for instance, I took the opportunity provided by the sunny warm weather to traipse around the shopping plaza during my break. I soon came upon one of our regulars, Deborah (pronounced de-BOR-ah; true), furiously working her thumbs over her cell phone. Feeling sociable, because it was warm and sunny, Friday, and payday, I thought I'd strike up an innocuous conversation. "Texting a tweet, DeBORah? Or does one simply tweet? I mean, is 'texting a tweet' redundant?"

She looked at me like I had scurvy. "Actually, for your information, I'm actually exting a bleat."

"Okay, " I smiled, "don't mind me." I had spied my friend Johnny and wanted to see if he still wasn't fucking with decaf, but DeBORah quickly snapped her phone shut and started walking toward me; I suddenly wanted a blizzard and sub-zero temperatures.

"You don't know what a bleat is, do you? Or Qwitter?"

"Well, I used to work on a goat farm, but I, um quit."

"Funny not. Qwitter's the new anti-social media that's taking the anti-social community by storm."

"There's an anti-social community? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense now DeBORah, does it?"

"I'll tell you what doesn't make sense: the term social media. That's redundant. But we're rebelling. There are more and more anti-social media springing up every day. Qwitter's been around like three weeks. It's getting kind of old."

Johnny was getting in his car. I was trapped. "So tell me about Qwitter."

"If I do you have to promise not to join. It kind of ruins it. But anyway, you bleat, not tweet, on Qwitter. Only 67 characters allowed. You bleat about how everybody and everything sucks. Then you have to wait 120 seconds before you ext it, basically cancel it. You hope nobody sees it and desponds to it."

"You mean respond?"

"No, despond, actually. Every desponse you get is a point. The person with the most points at the end of the day loses, and has to quit. Get it?"

"Do I have to?"

"Wait a minute. I have to update my FacelessBook page. Let no one know I'm talking to a dork."

"Thanks, DeBORah."

"Come on, you'd be perfect for anti-social media. On your FacelessBook page you post everything that sucks about your life, everything you can't stand, like music and books and movies, and list all the tattoos and piercings and cool stuff you don't have and all the names of the people you haven't or don't want to hook up with ever and all those people who aren't your friend. After my post on my blog about how much I hate skinny vegans, I got like six thousand not friends. Tyler was so mad at me she called me for like a week."

"What's the name of your blog? Maybe we could link to each other's. Mine is spitoutyo--"

"I don't blog, okay? I b-l-a-h-g, blahg. I'm down to like three hits a day, it's great." Her phone made a weird noise, kind of a synthetic, dub version of Iggy Pop's "I'm Bored." "Wait a minute." She popped open the phone and read something. "OMN! I gotta run. You have restrooms in your store don't you? Not the automatic flush kind, I hope?"

"What's going on, DeBORah?" Her excitement was palpable, and quite infectious. I started power walking to keep up with her as she hurried toward the store.

"It's a flush mob. eyecontactlessingeorgia just sent out a flush mob alert."

"Flash mob?"

"Flush mob. You ask too many questions to ever be really anti-social, you know. A flush mob is when everyone all over the place rushes to the nearest public restroom and flushes the toilet for like half an hour. That's why automatic flushers suck. It's too much work moving around to get the sensors to flush. OMN, this is so boring I love it." We were now in the store and DeBORah was sprinting to the women's room.

"OMN, DeBORah? What's that?" I called after her.

Just as she was pushing the women's room door open, she turned around and frowned a most beatific frown. "OMN. Oh My Nothing!"