Ben Pobjie, twits a twittering and irony that soars like a rocket in an Oscar Wilde fairy tale ...

Who's the bigger fool?

The fool that writes how much he hates the twits atwittering, and therefore must spend his time reading the twits so he can write how much he hates twittering, and therefore is a bigger waste of time and a bigger twit than the twits he spends his time watching with anthropological devotion? Or the original twits?

Put it another way? Who's the bigger fool? The fool that spends his time scribbling how he hates the twits atwittering, when he could just not bother with twitter, or the fool that spends his time scribbling about the fool who wastes his time twittering about the twits who are all a-twitter.

Or put it another way? Who's the bigger fool? The fool that seeks in a uber post modernist way to send up the twits who twitter about tweets by twittering about how awful the tweeters and their insipid tweets are, as a way of mocking the tweets who twitter about the tweeters?

Golly, I give up. It's all too self-reflexive for me. And what's worse it's way past the 140 character rule! What a grand, sensible rule that is. If only the twits who twittered about the twits who titter about the twits followed it ...

Well of course, it goes without saying, that this makes this scribbling profoundly foolish, even more foolish than Ben Pobjie, but I'm pleased to say that it also makes Ben Pobjie extremely foolish as he scribbles A world of twittering fools dizzy on the helium of idiots.

Now I have one supreme disadvantage. I don't twitter, don't need it, and don't do it. And I don't, in the kind of Melbourne way fancied by the trendy, feel the need to keep up with a social phenomenon purely so I can send it up, or more precisely send up those who send it up. I leave that to situation comedy writers, and to the likes of Ben Pobjie.

But if you're going to be a social commentator of the trendy "how I hate the people who hated the pointed shoes this year" school of column writing, you need to come up with funny things to say about funny things.

Enduring the personal masochism of a writer who seems to hate both the twits and the anti-twits is a bit like peeking into an SM dungeon and watching someone cop all the pain in the name of pleasure:

Don’t you hate Twitter? All those people, twittering away, typing all that rubbish, telling people about their lives as if any of us are interested.

As if anyone cares what they ate for lunch today or what they’re watching on TV or what they think about So You Think You Can Dance. Isn’t it just rubbish?

Yep, about as rubbish as people writing rubbish about rubbish. I'm feeling the need of a self-reflexive moment. Let's read on:

Of all the modern social trends I find personally offensive, Twitter has the greatest direct negative impact on my day-to-day life. All the banality. All those people being so dull.

I spent seven hours the other day just reading random people’s Twitter feeds and I can assure you that in all that time, not one person said anything worth reading.

It was so boring, it was all I could do to keep going for seven hours, and you don’t want to know the kind of mental anguish I went through when I started again the next morning.

All the people whose Twitters I spent all that time reading have no lives whatsoever.

Seven hours! Uh oh, must be time for that reflexive moment:

Thank God there are people like me to expose their vacuousness with well-crafted indignant articles.

Oh yes, now there's going to be a rush of cleverness which will turn out to be a clever ironical juxtapositioning of other twits talking about the dangers of twitters, perhaps as a way of savaging the likes of Miranda the Devine:

When did we get away from simply talking to each other?

Nobody talks anymore; certainly not to me, anyway. Sometimes, in fact, people go out of their way to not talk to me. Today I came in to work and started up a conversation about how awful Facebook is, and suddenly everyone had run back to their desks. Sad, it was, seeing all these people such slaves to their “online social networks” they couldn’t spare the time for conversation.

Ah the sad, lonely alienated writer. Excluded and yearning for a golden age - in a post modernist ironic way of course, perhaps while wearing black as conducive to discourse:

And remember when people used to write? Not on the internet; that sort of writing is objectively useless – but write letters? What happened to the art of writing letters? Of sitting down with a fountain pen and writing long, detailed paragraphs about the interesting things that were happening in one’s life?

And oh, what interesting things we wrote about! It was a golden age, when all our thoughts, words and movements were filled with such weighty import that we almost collapsed under the weight of our own fascinatingness.

Well yes, and then there's the skill with which we can stare at a literary flourish which is both astonishing and a fascinatinged example of an astute constructivist use of words. And more to come:

Not like today, when young people are in danger of floating away, so filled are they with the helium of idiocy.

It seems that “human interaction” is a dirty word these days. In fact, it’s two words, not that young people today would know that, seeing as how they’re all completely illiterate and innumerate, with their iPhones and their MMORPGs and their roflmao cheezeburger kthxbai.

All this networking, it rots the brain. Children these days aren’t taught the three Rs, they’re just taught how to log on and download and cyber-bully and such nonsense. Back in my day, we didn’t cyber-bully. We had the work ethic to bully people in person.

Ah yes, it is about Susan Greenfield and Miranda the Devine, I can feel it. Now for the coup de grace:

It’s the arrogance of these “Tweeters” that really burns me up. Just who do they think they are? What devilish spirit of presumption has possessed them to the extent that they feel justified in transmitting their every thought to the world? How dare they strut about updating us all on the progress of their meals, their new book, their cat’s ulcer. What gives them the right to tell us about themselves?

Where, in short, do they get off?

And then suddenly I'm traumatized. Is this post ironic post modernist post sarcasm designed to protect the right of others to tell us about the progress of their meals, their new book and their cat's ulcer?

But - gasp - this could mean that Susan Greenfield is right. After all, learning about someone's cat's ulcer is simply too much information. Too much clarity. The light, the light, it's shining in my eyes. So bright, uuhh can't see ... blinded by the light ... I mean if someone spat up a fur ball during the course of the meal, I'd expect them to eat it, not tweet about it ...

You see, in my day, satire and irony actually meant something, and was possibly written with a pen or even a feather, and didn't celebrate cat's ulcers as a way of making a point about the positive benefits of twits tweeting.

I mean, Hamlet shortened to 140 characters or less. now that's something to see. Go dude. But cat's ulcers? Is that all there is my friend? Send up Greenfield and Miranda the Devine so we can celebrate a tweet about a cat's fucking ulcer?

Or maybe that's the point of modern self-centred post modern ironists who hark back to the golden days of irony? Maybe that's the way they've always done irony? After all Rabelais went on and on about how goose feathers were the best, most sensuous way to wipe your arse. But can you wipe your arse with digital digerati?

Whatever, I'm getting so meta post ironic, in the sense that you can slag off the twits atwittering, and at the same time, savage the non-twits twittering about the twittering twits, that I feel dizzy, like a bleeding, suppurating, festering cankerous cat's ulcer.

At this point - after seven hours staring at my navel and trying to decipher the intricate whirls and what they might mean when read in conjuction with tea leaves - I gave up.

Another day at The Punch, and me left sore and bruised, and wondering how I can waste so much time reading such extensive meanderings while learning and understanding so little ...

Why do the best minds of a generation howl for Rupert Murdoch when they could howl at the moon for free?

Time for a therapeutic song:

Blinded by the light,
revved up like a deuce,
another runner in the night
Blinded by the light,
revved up like a deuce,
another runner in the night
Blinded by the light,
revved up like a deuce,
another runner in the night

Madman drummers bummers,
Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin' kinda older,
I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasin', sneezin' and wheezin,
the calliope crashed to the ground
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was...
Blinded by the light ...

Some silicone sister with a manager mister told me I go what it takes
She said "I'll turn you on sonny to something strong,
play the song with the funky break"
And go-cart Mozart was checkin' out the weather chart to see if it was safe outside
And little Early-Pearly came by in his curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride
Asked me if I needed a ride
But she was...
Blinded by the light ...

She got down but she never got tired
She's gonna make it through the night
She's gonna make it through the night
But mama, that's where the fun is
But mama, that's where the fun is
Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun
But mama, that's where the fun is
Some brimstone baritone anticyclone rolling stone preacher from the east
Says, "Dethrone the dictaphone, hit it in its funny bone,
that's where they expect it least"
And some new-mown chaperone was standin' in the corner,
watching the young girls dance
And some fresh-sown moonstone was messin' with his frozen zone, reminding him of romance
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was...
Blinded by the light ...

Madman drummers bummers, Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin' kinda older,
I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasin', sneezin' and wheezin,
the calliope crashed to the ground
Now Scott with a slingshot finially found a tender spot and throws his lover in the sand
And some bloodshot forget-me-not said daddy's within earshot save the buckshot, turn up the band
Some silicone sister with a manager mister told me I go what it takes
She said "I'll turn you on sonny to something strong"

Oh yes, turn me on to something strong, I need that hit and I need it now.

(Below: more Doonesbury here, where twits twittering feature regularly).