I’ve had it with Twitter.

There was a time when I was Tweeting Tweets more often than most news feeds (according to an officemate), and I was getting the news as it happens. Before they make the news room, most important events in the world are being tweeted now.

That’s all well and fine. Information is no longer sought; information finds us. Whether we’re in a boardroom meeting, crossing the street, or in the arms of a secret lover, information finds us through that wonderful invention called the smart phone.

Discourse has long been decentralized; dialogue is now constant, open sourced, and has become an endless stream of consciousnesses.

And as more and more people join the Twitter bandwagon, more and more voices join the discussion. From birds twittering on a tree branch, the whole world has become a forest infested with a swarm of cackling avian monstrosities.

Indeed, we’ve proven that talk is indeed cheap, and twitter is chirp.

A beauty queen falls flat on her face, and the whole world’s a twitter. The DOT launches a new slogan, and everyone has an opinion. This may be good occasionally when information is much needed, such as when we are once again stricken by a calamity. But on a daily basis, it’s overwhelming.

I no longer want to wake up to a world torn between the break up of Kimpoy and Vice Ganda. In the first place, who the fuck is Kimpoy, and why is he trending on my Twitter? A quick Google search has shown me nothing but poorly lit, low-res images, and a Tumblr account which is baffling in its popularity. Have we, finally, evolved to a society capable of producing our own Paris Hilton– a celebrity celebrated for being a celebrity? We’ve finally done off with talent, appeal, or charisma. Now, we’re just celebrating people because other people are celebrating them, apparently.

And, for the love of God, can everyone please just shut up. News flash: Everyone has an opinion, and I don’t listen to anyone else’s but my own. Just because you can Tweet about it, doesn’t mean you have to. People, I stopped caring about what you think five years ago when you attacked my LiveJournal.

Twitter used to be about following your interests. Now, people follow me just so I’ll follow them back. And they’re relentless about it. Constantly @mentioning me to follow them back.

Listen: I tweet LIKE I HAVE NO FOLLOWERS. I don’t care if you follow me, I don’t care how many followers I have, because I know most people who really LISTEN to my message don’t even have to have a Twitter account. So, I really am flabbergasted by this, this, this OBSESSION with followers. What are you guys doing with all those followers?

I do recommend Twitter as an exercise in the economy of language; there is something challenging with limiting your thought to 140 characters or less.  But with services like “Twitlonger”, people are circumventing that limit anyway. People just blab and blab and blab on Twitlonger, expecting you to click on their short URLs so you get to experience the full force of their nagging.

I cannot, for the love of me, wake up to another day with the latest news on Justin Beiber as the priority information I should consume. I do not want to know who were on Gandang Gabi Vice’s show last night, I don’t want to know who blogged something offensive against Filipinos now, I don’t want to know these things. I don’t give a fuck if someone made another “offensive” joke about Filipinos, I don’t want that stupid link to another group of prisoners dancing to Selene Gomez, I don’t really give a fuck if that new commercial about OFWS made you cry (because it’s still selling you a product, dumbass). I don’t care about your opinion on the RH bill (your adamant anger about anti-RH bill supporters won’t pass the bill faster; you know what would make the difference? making sure we have the right people in government by participating in the elections), I don’t care if there’s an anti-planking bill, or if the CBCP has now shown its disdain for their own cocks (what else will the CBCP damn next? Their own mothers?).

And since I can’t make anyone shut up (it’s their human right to express themselves, after all), I will now do the most logical solution: I will shut myself out of Twitter.

So, that’s it, Twitter. I won’t get suckered into your baits. You can’t make me comment on that new DoT slogan, or whichever Filipino is guesting on Ellen now. I’m shutting up.

I’ll be using Twitter to share links to my blog posts. Only because from now on, it’s going to be a one-way conversation. I tweet, you listen. Stop following me if you have a problem with that.

Because you know what, Talk is indeed Chirp.

And my SILENCE IS GOLDEN.