Countdown to Bloomsday

Well, actually, it's already started. But an interesting project is going to begin in about a half hour.

I don't use Twitter, because I think it's idiotic. Ian Bogost agrees, with more hifalutin language:

For me, Twitter represents the worst trends in the new internet culture. It purports to allow people to "communicate" in new ways, a promise that mostly creates new obligation and infatuation to stay "up to date" and "connected." In the world of Twitter, you (and me, and everyone) pay constant, tiny homage to the a new gimmickry.

This is a gimmickry that doesn't even rise to the level of the gadget, with its industrialist promise of technological progress. It is a kind of softer soft-pornography determined to make identity-assertion the new masturbation.

(Incidentally, despite mrgoodluckbear's long-standing and ojouchan's new-found association with Yelp, I have a similar reaction to it. Hopefully, I can be more specific soon.)

In response, Bogost and Ian McCarthy are going to coopt Twitter to reenact chapter 10 of Ulysses, "The Wandering Rocks." It will take place over the course of an hour starting at 2:55 EDT. Bogost's announcement gives the character usernames if you want to keep track of them, or you can presumably watch the whole thing unfold on the recent-updates page, the modernity interspersed among the mundanity.