Sex, Drugs and Twitter: Music History in 140 Characters or Less

Even technology created with good intentions can have harrowing consequences. Physicist Robert Oppenheimer expressed regret over his involvement with the development of the atomic bomb, thinking of a quote from the Baghavad Gita during the first nuclear weapons test at Los Alamos: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” And consider the many carpal-tunnels ravaged by Nintendo in the past 24 years, when all anyone wanted to do was rescue some princesses and paint Italian plumbers in a positive light.

Then there’s Twitter. When the creators of the podcasting company Odeo realized they couldn’t compete with a scrappy upstart named Apple, they re-imagined themselves as a micro-blogging platform, letting people communicate with the world, 140 characters at a time. Alas, “people” includes musicians. A fellow named Gabriel Nijmeh keeps a spreadsheet online listing every band or performer on Twitter. There are hundreds. I assure you, very little breaking news stems from these Tweets. You just don’t see “chrisbrown @m_tyson: know any good lawyers?” Instead, it’s a lot of concert announcements and minutiae and Neil Diamond asking you to be his Valentine.

Not that I blame anyone for wanting to take advantage of the marketing potential. Blink-182 has more than 10,000 followers despite only making one post, ever. But Twitter undermines a lot of mystique of being a rock star. Would Johnny Cash still have been the Man in Black if he kept us appraised that he was out of mayonnaise, or opined on who he thought should win Project Runway? Probably not.

If Twitter had existed throughout the duration of rock history, I suspect my feed would’ve looked like this: