'Another horror story from Iraq: 62 slaughtered. When did we stop caring?' asks one contributor. 'I just got in from the torrential rains, and I'm watching Scrubs before drifting away to dreamland,' says another. 'Watching the rain. Listening to music. Dreading the day ahead,' says yet another. The mood of pessimism echoed by a fourth person: 'Too bored to stay in, too tired to go out.'
These pronouncements originally appeared on the public timeline page at Twitter, the 'microblogging' site that asks, 'What are you doing?' Twitter invites visitors to answer via a 140-character 'tweet' sent from a mobile phone or computer.
Unlike the thoughtful foursome showcased, some 'twits', with nothing better to do, offer witticisms about their bowel movements. One critic asks who really needs to know that a guy in New Jersey is at a Pilates class. Another dismisses the Twitter twist on communication as 'a petri dish for galloping pointlessness'.
Maybe a skull or two should feature on the Twitter homepage to remind twits that one day death will make a permanent interruption, which means it might be time to do something more constructive than gossip into the vacuum of cyberspace. Twitter seems tailored to neurotics who can't bear a moment's silence and need to be numbed - the phrase 'opiate of the masses' comes to mind.
But Twitter is meant to be positive, uniting people a la MySpace, Tagged and all the other social networking sites. The buzz has caught the ear of highfliers including US presidential candidate John Edwards. 'Just landed in Ft Myers, FL. On our way to a 'Step It Up 2007 ' environmental event,' he writes in a recent despatch.
For Edwards, Twitter serves as a podium bathed in the spotlight. But if you follow his example, you risk turning your life into a barrage of mind-numbing details, with remarks from friends forever pinging into your mobile or computer.