Twitter and Facebook considered........

I don't Tweet.

I'm not on Facebook.

And, these days, I very rarely blog.

Neither do any of the people who's blogs I follow, much.......

Is this because in the last couple of years, blogging has fallen out of fashion, as the world of the Twitterati and the Facebookers has risen to an unprecedented ascendancy?

Or are our collective attention spans now so foreshortened by the needful brevity of Tweeting and the almost Pitman-like shorthand of Facebook, that any attempted literacy supplied by the Blog-o-sphere overloads the cerebellum to the point that the only way to deal with it is to ignore it?

Is the diminution of language assured?

Are we doomed to the abbreviated world of email and Text-Speak?

(UR sooooo R8)

Things have come to a pretty pass if so..........

A couple of nights ago, discussing this with Jackie over a nice glass of Vino Rosso Puglia Appassimento and a very agreeable Reblochon cheese, I defined Facebook/Twitter thus:

"It induces a morbid fascination of terrible power for the mindless wittering of people we hardly know, concerning things about which we do not care, communicated in language we barely understand".

I was rather pleased with this.

Jackie replied that I was a silly old fart.......

Plus ca change....

But really, does anyone else out there actually write letters anymore?

I have written two so far this year: yes, in old fashioned black ink on white note-paper in cursive script.

And I posted them. First class stamps and everything......

I even received a reply to one of them in like kind. (The other recipient is excused: both his parents are gravely ill.....)

A letter is an immensely valuable thing possessed of true power: in the architectural sweep of lines on a page, we imbue it with meaning beyond words.

I think a hand-written letter can contain the fullest expression of what is on the heart, in the mind and, without doubt, part of the very soul of the writer.

No wonder it's gone out of fashion...........

Now, here's the challenge:

Pick up a pen.

Apply it to some paper.

Write to someone.

Post it, snail-mail.

Old skool style.

You may well be amazed.

:-)