Many people argue that twitter is an utterly worthless waste of time, premised on the prevalence of twits about what someone had for breakfast or whether they’re off to the grocery store followed by the dry cleaner.  Some people really enjoy such twits.  These are people who get vicarious thrills out of someone else’s chores, a sad bunch at best.

These twits, however, are not the sort that I, or the people with whom I engage on twitter, do.  Not to blow my own horn, but I wouldn’t waste your time reading about the mundane aspects of my life.  They bore me, and certainly would mean nothing to anyone else.  Instead, twitter is used for some fooling around, dissemination of a bit of socially useful information, the occasional rallying of thoughtful and like-minded folks for an important cause such as #HankSkinner, and every once in a while, a substantive discussion of law.

Such a discussion was begun yesterday by Bryan Beel, with David Sugerman jumping in moments later, about whether a prosecutor has a duty under Brady to test all DNA evidence.  A few twits in and Trace Rabern, a New Mexico criminal defense lawyer, who jumped in on the subject of whether the prosecution was under a duty to disclose the existence of DNA evidence and allow the defendant access to test it per Brady and Kyles v. Whitley.  The problem, if it isn’t already clear, is that Trace and I went back and forth in an interesting discussion, but for the fact that we were twitting about entirely different things.

Twitter is fine, sometimes even great, for some things.  Legal discussions are not one of them.  I should have realized earlier that Trace had come into the discussion midway in, and having missed the intro, was working off some midway twits.  Her view of what we were discussing was wholly appropriate, but the problem stems from the shorthand used on twitter that could make a twit appear to be discussing any one of a dozen subjects, or aspects of a subject, and lead one down the wrong path. 

Since I was there from the outset, I should have realized earlier on that we were twitting at cross-purposes. My bad.  Because it was twitter, I was jumping in and out while doing other things, as I expect was everyone else, and neglected to realized what should have been obvious.  Trace apologized for jumping the shark.  I apologize for being a bonehead.  Jumping the shark sounds way cooler than being a bonehead.

This isn’t the first time that misunderstandings happen on twitter based upon somebody coming across a twit that strikes them a certain way.  In fact, it happens all the time.  It has the negatives of other forms of electronic communication, lack of expression, inflection, such that humor, sarcasm, irony, all the good stuff, is lost.  The setup also serves to deny ready access to parts of conversations involving twits from others you aren’t following, leaving twitterers on the outside of a discussion without their knowledge.

Then there’s the big Kahuna problem, that not every idea is well expressed in 140 characters.  But that’s twitter.

Most onliners are deeply enamored with the newest and grooviest forms of electronic communications.  The gurus tell us about the joys and wonders, how they will connect us with our tribes so that we can be authentic and genuine (and ultimately get rich by tribe members sending us vasts sums of money which we, in turn, send back to them in a never ending tribe circle, until the chief of the tribe puts it all in his pocket and moves to parts unknown without WiFi access or gets a new screen name).  It’s invariably positive, leading us down the garden path to digital Nirvana.

Sometimes, the new doesn’t always work as well as the gurus say, at least not for all purposes.  I thought you should know.