Published 27 February 2009 · Main Posts a further descent into barbarism Jeff Sparrow I’ve started experimenting with an Overland Twitter account. Somehow, this really depresses me. OK, I like blogs, despite the TL;DR factor. Even though Facebook seems inherently inane, I can see that it’s useful, especially for events and so on. But the very idea of Twitter, embodied in its basic question ‘What are you doing?’, seems less about overcoming alienation than enthusiastically embracing it, with most of the tweets reading like dialogue from Beckett. What are you doing? Nothing. What are you doing? Sitting in a garbage bin waiting to die. So why sign up? Basically, if you want to promote something like a literary magazine in the twenty-first century, you embrace any opportunity for publicity that offers itself, whether you like it or not. Hence the ‘You kids get off my lawn!’ grumpiness about this post. Still, I’m open to being convinced. Certainly, Macca‘s managed to transform Twitter into something like poetry so maybe there’s hidden depths to it. Still gotta sort out some things with WordPress, too. Jeff Sparrow Jeff Sparrow is a Walkley Award-winning writer, broadcaster and former editor of Overland. More by Jeff Sparrow › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.