Internet geeks, which more and more look like a cross-section of society than the soda guzzling guy who lives in mom’s basement, got all atwitter earlier this week when the New York Times supposedly banned the word “tweet” when referring to the action of posting to Twitter. An earth-shattering controversy it’s not, but one that leads to an interesting debate (which I shall kindly spare you) about technological advances and the effect on language. By the way, New York Times writer Philip B. Corbett has responded to the drama writing, “I had suggested that outside of ornithological contexts, “tweet” should still be treated as colloquial rather than as standard English.” Uh, 140 characters or less dude. Jeez. Anyway, if you’re a bigger fan of the word “tweet” than, say, “ornithological,” you might just want to head to the New Mexico Tweetup. From 7 p.m. to a touch before midnight Saturday, June 19 at the Hyatt (330 Tiejeras NW). Tweeters will gather and talk to each other in person, in full sentences (maybe even a paragraph or two), no less. Talk about an experiment in language. No longer will the format be: [snarky comment] RT @whoever [headline/snarky comment] [link].Instead, it’s going to be, “Hey, did you see that article in the New York Times about I Can Has Cheezburger?” “No, what did it say?”“I don’t know, I didn’t read all of it.” [silence] Or hopefully not. Still not sure about the whole Twitter thing? Or maybe you’re just embarrassed by your ancient phone, which barely has texting capabilities, let alone being high tech enough to allow you to install a Tweet Deck app. Have no fear. Alibi.com will have a little widget installed on Saturday so you can keep up with all the action from the event. For you tweeters, here’s the entirety of this article in readable (and retweetable) terms:pbth @nytimes hater http://bit.ly/bOuY0p, @weeklyalibi will follow the #NMTweetup @HyattABQ http://bit.ly/98clsD
#Geekspeak
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