Twitter Confusion

Okay, I admit that I am new to the whole Twitter thing.  To me it feels like a room crammed with people who are shouting at one another.  It's crammed because I did figure out how to "follow" people.  But most of those people I'm following don't know one another, are too famous to follow me back, or are strangers that I've followed because I think there is an etiquette to this and I don't want to do it wrong.  Just because I am listening in on their posts, doesn't mean I am hearing the other side of their conversations. 

So.. I guess it's better to imagine that in this crowded room, everyone is talking on their cell phones... 

In twitterspeak...

full of codes with hash tags...

and links.

Oh! and btw, you can only use 150 characters per post. 

...Including the hash tags and links.

So to make better use of your character limit, everyone uses text abbreviations.

*sigh*

Does this cereal come with a decoder ring?

How is it possible to actually communicate anything this way? 

I write short short stories.  Really short stories.  500 to 1000 word stories.  I can deeply appreciate it when each word carries multiple duties for saying more while using less words.  It makes a story sharp and clean.  But twitter has such a steep learning curve to  decode that it's a lot of work for me to slog through.

This reminds me a lot of when I learned HTML, once you figured out that all the commands were shortened down to initials, and you knew what the initials stood for - the language was easy to understand.  Then you just needed the rules that governed them like how to <open> and </close> them nest them properly like those Russian dolls, so that the text and images landed in the right spot on the page. 

So today I am <rant>ing about it here, and I'll post this link over there - Maybe someone will take pity on my confusion and walk me through how to use the hash tags to stitch a conversation together with someone.

After spending a cramped hour or so on twitter, confused and opening links to unpack comments, it's nice to come here and use as many words as I want to wind my way through the thought process.  I can wriggle my toes in the sand and stretch out on my own beach after surfing the web.   

I feel better now.  Like I've been heard.  After all, you did come here to listen to what I had to say - even if you don't leave me comments.  But please do.  Leave me comments, I mean.  It's nice to have space to talk, but I really would like to have a conversation about this with someone.  Are you a twitter user?  Do you understand it?  Is it a satisfying way of communicating?  Reply to my post and help a girl out!

Thanks for giving me a part of your day.   

</rant>