WTF Are you bitching about?

I have been quite busy off-line and on-line lately. You know, taxes, bills, exercising, and all other real life shit that doesn’t occur on Twitter.

Emerging back into Twitterville, I felt I missed a whole hoopla of something or other around Amazon. Dazed and confused, I put on my detective cap to find the missing clues. As I sniffed around a couple blogs and Tweets, I stopped. I realized the clues was just leading me to a bunch of really ridiculous and meaningless arguments.

I must caveat, while I was indeed a busy little beaver offline, I did not toss my digital fetish completely to the side. I was indulging into information of much meatier substance. I found a new book on aid in Africa to buy, read “Me 2.0″ online (oops! Dan, you did know your entire book is visible online, right?), engulfed entire Economist at the gym, researched a disease that affects 1.5 million, and read an article on the recent Times headline of religion and America. I didn’t close my ears to the world. Only redirected my hearing to subjects of greater essence than a brand fubar.

I still don’t really understand what Amazon did or did not do. And you know what, I don’t care. Whatever Amazon did to piss off a couple of consumers is miniscule compared to events that will effect us all:

- Millions of dead in South Sudan.
- The increase in numbers of troops to Afghanistan
- Italian earthquake
- north Korea and China talks, failed launch of a Taepo-Dong II missile
- Enormous growth of individuals seeking jobs with nonprofit due to waffling high unemployment
- Danish PM appointed to lead NATO forces
- Health reports on oral contraceptive and silicone breast implants are associated with Lupus

Do you all see how much occurs every day without Twitter?

Dan Dennett on TED speech on memes, touched on how we spread ideas. Are we using our information channels to spread informative, positive, or useful ideas? Or are we using the most incredible communication tools (FREE to us) to spew hatred and anger? What positive impact has your information made on another life today? Did you make them aware of a disease that affects 1.5 million people, genocide that has occurred for decades, your elected officials negotiating with communist countries?

At the end of the day, I would rather my consumer dollars go for a brand to give their shipping clerk a bonus than spend the time entertaining a bunch of isolationist Tweeters.

That bonus, spent on the economy, would affect hundreds more of American lives versus calming one negative voice.