At the risk of falling into the trap of conflating boredom with sophistication, allow me to take a meme meta and say that even during my Lenten hiatus from Tumblr, I am tired of hearing people on FB/Twitter, etc, say that they are tired of SXSW-oriented Twitter/Tumblr posts. I do wonder, however, if putting so many microbloggers in the same place will, in fact create some sort of epistemic black hole, where an infinitely recursive series of tweets and reblogs turn out to have no actual antecedent in actual lived experience, and the very substance of the city of Austin begins to disappear into blank, white space, like that scene in Coraline.* Na'mean?
More immediately for my purposes, and more on these meals soon, last night I had a dynamite 3 course prix fix. I considered Twittering after the first course, but I thought that would be rude. As it happened, I was dining alone. Basically, even though I was sitting at the bar, and could have done it discreetly, I could not, because it felt like I was being rude to myself. I'm not sure if I can come up with a better phrase than than that for the tendency that these ever more pervasive technologies of self-representation have to tempt us to have the representation of life swallow up the experience of living life. As it stands now, any cell phone with text capability means you have Heisenberg in your pocket, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
*Take your money out of your IRA (ha!), and invest it in blue wigs sometime before Halloween. It has the legibiity and potential for hootchification that make it a strong buy on the Halloween Futures Market.
And where did you have this fine three course prix fixe meal on Saturday? I ask because I was meeting with my baker at 5&10 and thought I saw you perusing the menu outside.
Posted by: Hugh Acheson | Tuesday, 17 March 2009 at 08:21 AM
There is nothing outside the tweet, dude.
Posted by: JL | Tuesday, 17 March 2009 at 10:56 AM