Twitter is reminding me of The Simpsons episode in which Lisa creates, cultivates, and becomes a goddess to a population of tiny people.
(Bear with me, here, it does get better).
You have to know a bit about Twitter to appreciate this comparison. For those of you who need a crash course, go read this.
Plot: Lisa grows a population of tiny people in a petri dish in her bedroom. At first the tiny people are a bit rudimentary and don’t know much. Lisa goes to bed and the next morning, the tiny people have evolved from neanderthals to civilized folks.
Another day passes, and this new civilization has formed things that new civilizations tend to form: religion and war and a worship of Lisa, who’s like a goddess to her petri dish people.
Are you getting this? Doesn’t this remind you of something?
Twitter is the petri dish and the Tweeple are the inhabitants who are evolving every minute (sometimes every 30 seconds), every day.
Just like Lisa, I paid attention to my followers (my Tweeple) and offered my help and thoughts and comments Sunday night and the next morning when I “pulled my petri dish” out (logged into my Twitter account) I delightedly discovered I had 28 new followers.
Where else am I going with this comparison?
Well…I think the Twitter population is evolving and of course, most certainly, growing. (It grew over 700% last year!) and I think we are feeding off the thoughts that stimulate our minds, much like the people in Lisa’s petri dish fed off the bacteria in their world. I am NOT comparing our tweets to bacteria in a bad way but in a good way.
Think about how bacteria works: a bacteria is a single, self-contained living cell. Each person in Twitter land is a single, self-contained living being. When we get together, we multiply quickly. When we think together, we evolve more quickly.
This is another reason why I say the Internet is evolving the human race—because we can meet other people who have similar ideas, thoughts, aspirations, hopes, dreams and organize ourselves so that we solve problems and/or create new things that help people. These new things can be as simple as a new iphone application or as complex as solving world hunger.
Let me make something clear: I am not saying that my followers worship me like a goddess (although if there is anyone out there who would like to, that’s cool with me). What I am saying is that there are people in Twitter (myself included) who follow some really interesting people who either have great minds, great humor or great applications. We are evolving because we get to read the thoughts of intellectual leaders; creative scientists; sarcastic comedians; and geek heroes who save our lives each day by inventing a new Twitter ap (like this one).
In the end, the petri dish people grow so smart that they invent a laser that shrinks Lisa to their size and they take her into their world where she becomes their goddess-ruler.
And so you see why I can’t help but compare Twitter to Lisa Simpson and the petri dish population.
Art imitates life imitating art. Or is it…life imitates art imitating life? (Am I the woman dreaming she is the butterfly or am I the butterfly dreaming she is the woman?) Someone rescue me from this train of thought—leave me a comment, please.
(This was written in 2009.)
