Twitter, that endless and obscure runway of missives; the burden of proof that mankind is nearing the atonement of its vapidity and carelessness, has shat out another Fabergé egg for us all to enjoy with a kind of guttural laughter only the misfortune of another human being can provide, and I love it more than anything under that sun right now.Norman N., perhaps best known as @oldmansearch by his 90,839 (and counting) followers, is (ostensibly at least) an 81 year-old man whose son has tricked him into thinking Twitter is Google.His queries, though curt (and often embarrassing), offer a unique voyeuristic glimpse into a less hyperbolic Internet than the one we’re used to seeing through the lens of social media. He reveals, on occasion, a (kind of) forgivable ignorance that, in and of itself, sheds a pertinent light on humanity: maybe doubt is the key to knowledge, but the knowledge we’ve been searching for is just self-serving and ridiculous.What’s more: It’s brilliant. It’s what Samuel Beckett would have done with a Twitter handle. Its candidness justifies and confirms the meaninglessness of life in the most remarkable way since the sky rained fire on the dinosaurs. OK, that was a bit hyperbolic.Yesterday, an article in The New York Times by Bill Keller considered a similar point to that of my new favorite Twitter account: “…whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity.”Norman N. follows no one and yet receives responses from scores of loyal readers, which throws the whole infrastructure of Twitter (and Google) into question. With Google, despite it’s vast database of “answers,” searchers are always handing over a piece of themselves to the juggernaut of search when they click what’s “most relevant.” They trust Google to give them what they want to see which, as I confidently suppose you know is fucking nuts.With Norman, we’re able to oversea the early stages of a potential coup d’état: Internet revolutionaries beginning to understand that people can rely on each other (again) for information instead of simply handing the responsibility over to infinitely powerful search engines.Keller calls Twitter, “the enemy of contemplation” and I think he’s right, but Norman subverts his claim by inviting an audience of active human beings in to comment on his “searches.”Having the ability to respond to a ne’er-do-well follower’s misleading reply is something even Google + 1 and Yelp can’t duplicate, because with both, you’ve already entered into prefabricated arenas. With Google, the arena is stocked with whatever Google chooses to stock itself with and the same goes for Yelp.What Norman has at his disposal is something closer to the online community ethos of the Condé Nast-owned, social news aggregator, Reddit, where users vote to determine the relevancy of submissions. What separates Norman from everything on the Internet is the fact that he is chasing information in a Truman Show-esque sort of vacuum, where he’s completely oblivious to the following he’s gathered and is in no way vying for any kind of recognition. He remains humbly searching for answers in a self-reflexive void of obscurity that Keller would say makes people “sound stupid,” and that I would say makes people sound utterly insane.
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