In preparation for Bryan’s arrival, I suppose I’d better try to get my neurons firing – this guy’s a thinker!
Unfortunately, I never have my most interesting conversations archived when I need them. Once again, Marty and I engaged in a spirited debate via telephone today. I said something about a current event and lamented the fact that Twitter, while very useful, can also be frustrating to me at times with the <insert word here – offensive, useless, bizarre> “trending topics” that are featured. Right now, #ifyouknowmewell and Kate Upton are two of the trending topics, though #corporategreed is the top promoted trend. I’ll just leave those topics right there because they’ll certainly change. by the end of this post. I know I used the word frustrated because Marty, as only he can do, launched into this thought-provoking speech that was summarized by saying “…dude, why do you even care?” He noted (correctly) that the person in the grocery line nearby may be buying or reading every one of the strange headline magazines you’ll find, but that this doesn’t and shouldn’t matter.
I wish I could have captured everything we said, as there was some value there that I certainly can’t duplicate here. It made me think of what was (and is, I guess) called the Zeitgeist. “The spirit of the times” or “the spirit of the age”, per Wikipedia. Google Zeitgeist captures searches in such a fashion as to try to define the spirit of 2011. Does it matter? Should it? This was the spirit of the debate. I suppose the data itself could be of interest and these companies have the data, so they share it and, in a sense, influence our opinions by sharing it. I wouldn’t have known if “Loyalty Day” was a trending Twitter topic at this moment. I guess if I care to know why, I’m to click the link or search Twitter for that term. I’ll avoid it – it may be better not to know. Per the Google Zeitgeist, “Rebecca Black” was the top-ranked item on their 2011 list of how the world searched. Marty and I weren’t talking at this point, but my reaction is… to react in some fashion. I could lament the fact that a YouTube sensation was more searched than seemingly anything. Marty’s response is to question why I care and why it bothers me. That’s fair.
Somehow, that transitioned into the fact that obscene or irrelevant uses of Twitter might discourage educational use. My thinking was that something like #dancemoms (trending now as I return to edit this at about 11PM ET) might lead to inappropriate comments and therefore be forbidden in the classroom. I would probably argue that comments about “dance moms” is pretty irrelevant. We weren’t discussing this specific topic, but Marty’s response made a few points worth repeating. First, that is what’s trending and the data “is what it is,” good or bad. Does it need to be judged? It may be important or it may not, but it’s what’s being searched or tweeted and it can speak for itself. Regarding irrelevance and such, this is simply new mediums and methods that likely reflects the same irrelevance that one could find in other areas. The second best-selling book of 2011 was “The Hunger Games.” The top 2 grossing movies of 2011? “Harry Potter” and “Transformers” sequels. Top 3 prime-time Nielsen rated shows for the week of March 12? Singing competitions. The top web site visited in 2011 was (surprise) Facebook. And on and on…
I don’t want to miss this point, though. I believe I brought up the spoof Twitter accounts and pointed out that, while in some ways a huge waste of time, are often very humorous. As if you need it, here’s a Mashable article detailing some popular ones. Old Hoss Radbourn was a baseball player who died in 1897. Someone’s having fun tweeting under that username (with over 39,000 followers).
@OldHossRadbourn I wish Performance Enhancing Drugs like “Cortisone” had been around in my day. That’s funny!
Marty asked a simple question – “Shouldn’t learning be fun?” Honestly, I’d rather try to write 5 appropriate tweets from the perspective of a <insert topic here> than to write a report on the same topic. Wouldn’t kids have more fun with that as well? At least one district has a “is learning fun” type of check that they make during classroom walkthroughs. As dated as I am, I remember having a “current events quiz” for bonus points in a middle school class. I suppose “current” is defined completely differently in today’s world, but that doesn’t make it a problem or anything worth fretting about.
So does zeitgeist or ‘trending topics’ matter? In some ways, it can be relevant. I suppose it doesn’t really matter if it matters or not. It just is and it will continue to be and that’s OK. On a much lighter note, the picture above is a dog named Biscuit. He’s not on Facebook or Twitter as of yet… but don’t think I haven’t considered it.