'Tweets Are Not News, People!': One Anonymous Exec's Plea to Stop the Insanity (Guest Column)

The Associated Press, Thursday, December 27, 2012, 4:45pm (PST)

The Hollywood Reporter -- This story first appeared in the Jan. 10, 2013, issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

We all have a lot of hopes for the new year. Most of them, face it, we can't do anything about. But some are within our power to change, to crush, to eradicate, to blot from the face of the frickin' earth. And in regards to that, I will now make a modest proposal.

How about we all get together and stop bogus tweeting -- and the bogus tweeters who tweet their bogus tweets? OK, it's a small thing. But it would make this world so much better. Because I don't know about you, but the lame, the stupid, the shallow, the foolish and the totally moronic tweets of the past year are still sticking to the bottom of my mind like dirty bubble gum on the bottom of my mental shoes. Get it off! Help!

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I'm not even following the bozos or their 140-character effluvia. You don't have to follow them to be slimed continually. Because every little itty-bitty blob of digital sputum that's launched into the ecosystem, every brain fart that hits the communal ozone layer is picked up by the 24/7 foghorn that never stops bleating, and so I know what the proprietor of the New York Post thinks about the Jewish media. I know that Donald Trump never fails to conform to our expectations of him as the president of the lunatic fringe. I even know what Ke$ha looks like when she's peeing. Yes, I do. And I don't want any of it! Get 'em all outta here!

Here's how it would work. Each of us, as individuals and citizens, would agree to stop following idiots. We also would unsubscribe from news outlets that feature too many celebrations of fatuous tweeters and their asinine tweets, even when those celebrations are cleverly masked as snarky attacks on the crass and frivolous. While silly twits with their two-bit tweets are the fomenters of dreck and drivel, it's the repeaters and retweeters who deserve as much of our disapproval. Aren't we shocked at Kim Kardashian's picture of her butt? Haven't seen it? Well, here it is! Shocking, huh?! Don't we have to stop this kind of thing? Want to see it again? Click on the link to find &hellip a gallery of butts! Isn't it scandalous? You agree? Good! "Like" us on Facebook!

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Tweets are not like bees, which go away if you ignore them. They are more like the mosquito: A little harmless bite can itch for weeks.

Lose them all, I say. Lose the moguls who shouldn't be sharing their unmediated thoughts in the first place. No matter how annoyed we purport to be when they step over the tweetline, believe me, they revel in the attention. People hate my tweet. I'm relevant!

Lose the angry Minaj-erie of pissed-off hip-hoppers picking inane fights with each other. Let them grapple in silence and anonymity.

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Lose the slow-moving 127-car pileup as yet another child actor bipolarizes into oblivion in full public view. Most of all, frickin' squelch anything marketed to our tiny minds by their repulsive parents, siblings or other sycophants.

Lose the racist sludge swirling out there from the former and possibly future Confederate States of America, and seriously censure all media outlets that cover it as if it were real news. The random tweets of a poisonous few do not a national story make.

Tweets are not news, people! They are what we choose to focus on instead of news. They are proof of how truly insufficient the culture in which we all now live is. And who needs to look at that every day? Shouldn't we all be looking at something else?

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