Tyler Brûlé Bristles At Twitter

The globetrotting Tyler Brûlé recently put down his Dom Perignon long enough to write a piece in the Financial Times about his recent trip to Japan. As he was drinking with some Japanese friends the topic of Twitter came up, and one of the group asked Tyler, “What is Twitt-ah?” This led Tyler off on a series of observations and scolding which I think trumps the usual Sunday supplement nonsense that lumps Twitter in with the modern world’s great shortcomings:

[via FT.com / Columnists / Tyler Brûlé - Bliss of a Twitter-free moment]

As I silently repeated those four syllables (“what is ‘Twitt-ah’”?), I felt a wave of envy. How wonderful to live in a highly evolved digital society and not have been tainted by yet another media fad, I thought.

Soon after, those pangs of envy shifted to cold resentment. How lucky to not have your e-mail inbox crammed with random mindless publicists, acquaintances and even friends inviting you to join them or follow them on Twitter. It was bad enough having the world invite you to be “LinkedIn”, but the daily dilemma of what to do with these unwanted invitations is far too stressful. Do I ignore it? Is there a limit to how many times they can try to reach me? What if I actually rather like this person but I don’t want to follow them? Do I send an e-mail of apology? Does it demand a handwritten letter?

Oh, yes, Tyler. We definitely expect a hand-written letter, explaining your motives in detail, whenever turning down any sort of request coming to you regarding anything to do with any social tools on the Web.

This sort of diatribe is exactly what I would expect from the man that produced BBC Four’s Counter Culture, a documentary series about cultural aspects of shopping, in 2006.

This, too, is part of the media war against web culture.