Twitteritation

Twitteritation (n): The state of being irritated when someone tweets on Twitter in your presence, particularly when they should be paying attention to you.


Now, I’d be the first to admit that I tweet a few times a day. And sometimes I even tweet from my cell phone. But I do know my limits. Just as I turn off my cell phone while having a meal with someone at a restaurant, just as I turn the cell phone ringer off when I’m at a meeting, I do not tweet when I’m in the presence of someone else.


The Twitter phenomenon is a fad that fulfills a current need. But it IS a fad that will lose its popularity when something better comes along. Remember the first cell phones? Big and bulky, some even came attached to a large box that hung from your belt. They’ve morphed into total communication devices – albeit larger than the Dick Tracy wristwatch phone that we marveled at in the ‘40s and ‘50s.


Case in point (one that frosts my butt): On Monday's "Live with Regis and Kelly," Twitter king Ashton Kutcher introduced Kelly Ripa to Twitter. Like many impressionable young ladies, she became hooked. On Tuesday, when Regis returned from a “work-cation,” she had a computer in front of her and tweeted during the show. Today, she kept asking producer Michael Gelman to check Twitter for her.


I’m sure that during commercial breaks, she was running to the computer and tweeting. Which is fine, she can whatever she wants off-camera.


But when she tweets and talks about tweeting to such a large extent during the show, now THAT irritates me. It feels just like she’s answering the cell phone at breakfast.


For years now, I’ve been watching Regis and Kelly Live every morning when I wake up. If this obsession with Twitter keeps up, I’m going to switch over to Christie Paul on HLN during Live’s host chat.


So what am I really trying to say? I’m saying that we’ve become more than a self-indulgent society. We’ve become a curious and rude society. Suddenly, people outside the range of our vision, strangers we don’t even know, are more important than the ones we’re with. We ignore present company to cater to others elsewhere.


It’s like a interrupting a conversation to answer a phone call.


That’s rude … just so rude.