The Slowest Twitter

Three days a week, I drive down to the hospital to take place in cardiac rehabilitation – or, as we call it, “The gym with electrodes on.”  My therapy is basically going to work out with a monitor slung around my neck so they can rescue me should I stroke out.
(As one of the nurses said, “If your heart fails, you’ll get to watch your death right here in real time.”  To this day, I’m shocked at how well she clued in to my sense of humor.  Or maybe she just terrifies nine out of ten patients and lucks out on me.)
But like all gyms, the cardiac rehab center has a couple of TVs blaring the morning news shows, and what shocks me is how these news shows are totally like an inefficient Twitter.  It’s basically a soupcon of media references, news links, discussions of the day’s social uproars, referendums (“What do we think about this trend in movies?”)… but to me, who’s used to flipping through my Tweetstream and picking out the best and most interesting links, it’s just totally slow.
But it’s basically the same thing.  Twitter is steaming about the dumb thing some guy said in an essay?  Well, Good Morning America is talking about some dumb thing some politician said in a speech.  Is there some news on the next Catching Fire movie, or a photo of the new Batman suit?  Well, I heard it twelve hours ago on Twitter and saw the picture, but it’s basically the same thing.  Is there a round table where people are discussing the pros and cons of some social issue?  Well, that’s the back-and-forth I get when people post links to their blogs on whatever topic’s caught fire today.
My Twitter is a little more news-oriented, because I’m a little more news-oriented, but it’s essentially the same thing.  But whereas I can stuff a whole news cycle into ten minutes of skimming and clicking on Twitter, after an hour with my eyes on the TV I’m still waiting for the inevitable “Did you hear about the Sriracha plant?  Isn’t that nutty?” that was emblazoned all over Twitter yesterday.
And it’s like, “Do people just find this comforting? Why would people watch this when there are better alternatives?  I mean, I get why it’s on in gyms and airports, because it’s inoffensive and you don’t have to pay attention, but who’d put this on first thing in the morning?”  And I wonder if it’s because they don’t know about Twitter or RSS or Facebook, or have found those options somehow lacking, and yet it’s weird to think that at the core, these mass audiences and I are seeking much the same forms of entertainment but this is so different in style and substance.
It’s not a coincidence that these morning shows have made Tweets a part of their cycle.  They are Tweets.  Just extremely inefficient ones.