In the past few days I've seen some people on Twitter tweet some long rants. Now, I write long rants too. (This is probably one of my shorter ones, just so you know.) But I don't tweet them. Taking up several tweets just for one rant is simply not my way. But then, I'm a blogger, and they're probably not. Since I'm a blogger, I blog my rants. I want my readers to read each rant in one gulp. Then, about 12 hours apart, I have FriendFeed and TwitterFeed tweet the title and the link. I'd rather do this than risk "Twitter jail".
Consider this something of a "meta-rant".
I like to rant. I try to keep it under control, and I don't think I've truly overstepped any boundaries yet, though I suspect my current obscurity may be the only reason I haven't stepped on anybody's brittle egos yet. I love controversies, and sometimes I throw myself into some.
Twitter is great for getting oneself into the middle of a controversial issue in real time. Take the case of a certain now-infamous British Enron clone called Trafigura, already in trouble for dumping toxic waste in poor African countries, which got into some extra deep doo-doo the other day thanks to its law firm, Carter-Ruck, which managed to slap a total ban, or super injunction, on covering Parliament against the media. Sure enough, it backfired: Twitter went berserk; thanks to something called the Streisand Effect, Trafigura is now as infamous as Enron itself, and the already notorious Carter-Ruck have earned themselves a new level of well-deserved infamy. When I found the terms "Trafigura" and "Carter-Ruck" appearing in my Twitter stream attached to tweets denouncing censorship, and then trending among Twitter's top search terms, I knew at once that I had to get involved. Here's my blog post on the scandal (in my project blog, interestingly), and my 140-character summary.
But for long rants, Twitter just won't cut it. Being the blogger type I am, I prefer you down my whole rant in one gulp. So that's why I don't tweet my rants like the non-blogger tweeps do. I blog them.
End of meta-rant. ;)
