Since I’ve been using Twitter, I’ve been trying to put my finger on why it seems like such a familiar mode of communication. It finally hit me that it feels like CB Radio used to.
There’s the whole mythos of what CB Radio is, with the “10-4 Good Buddy!” triteness and the assumption that it’s only used by truck-drivers and undereducated yokels. Ok, granted, there are elements of that to it, but as with all things, that’s not where it ends.
When I had my first truck, my junior and senior years of highschool (late 80s), I wanted to pimp it before pimping was cool. So with my massive fortune I acquired working fastfood, I got a cassette deck, radar detector, and a 40 channel CB Radio, and installed them all myself.
At first, all I did was lurk, listened to the CB to see what was going on, who was talking, what they talked about. Yeah, alot of truckers talking trash and getting directions, but there was also a local social community. Warnings of where cops were speed-trapping, prayers of safe travels, laments of missing the families. Some had mobile radios, some had base stations at their houses. What did they talk about? They talked about what they were doing, just like Twitter asks of you.
That radio went with me to college, in a town that was much much larger than my hometown, and since it was a college town instead of a factory town, the CB community was quite different too. Dozens of people had radios, some were “working” people that were doing daily business of getting trucks and supplies from here to there, some were families talking about what’s for dinner, and a sizeable community of “cruisers”. Every town has a circuit where the kids drive in circles all night to meet and socialize, but having radios added a new dimension.
I remember one family in particular with obvious nicknames, or “handles”, that were all something like Big Mama, Big Karl, Little Karl, and Little Stacey. In lurking, I got to know the windows of time they’d be around and chatting, what they were having for dinner most days, and if Little Karl was going to be late for football practice or not.
You could get into the conversation by saying “Break.” and someone in the audio cloud would hear you and answer “Go, Break.” And then you’d jump in and chat. Never need a reason other than wanting to say something, anything, to whoever would care to be there. But still, it became more than that. I eventually met several people, found places to meet up and hang out, became friends “off air”, where we would not have met for any other reason at all. There was this one guy named Diamondback (that we also called “sport”, because of an argument that never got settled over if his truck was or was not a “step-side”), who was fond of the idea of rattlesnakes, we had nothing at all in common, but we were friends for a couple years, just because of the radio and that surrounding community.
Twitter gives me that same feel. It’s like an open mic in a group of people that may or may not “have their ears on” at any one particular time. But at that same time, you may have a whole new audience at any one time that you didn’t know about. It’s a very fluid and unstructured environment, but it’s still a community like any other, with its own stars and inside jokes and vernacular.
Now we talk about ‘tweets’ and ‘twhirling’, we live-blog quotes from Lessig at Symposiums, meet up on-the-fly at Otto’s; because of Twitter. We tweet about breaking tech news, and what’s for dinner, and when we wake up or go to sleep or have a coffee or if family is ill.
I bet Diamondback and Torley would mix it up.
And by the way, I was “Snowdog” because I thought it was obscure and cool. Betrayed by Rush again.
I’m going 10-7.
