"Twitter foments the fantasy of our vast influence, our endless relevance to everyone, and enlists more or less meaningless numbers to sustain it. Following people and being followed doesn’t signify any kind of commitment, any reciprocal responsibility — it’s just an effortless way to give and receive empty recognition. It’s a devalued currency, hyperinflated. But we can use that number nonetheless as a focal point, a kind of mandala for our self-worship. The quantification disguises the emptiness of the social relations it is supposedly counting, an operation that reiterates the kind of instrumental rationality that characterizes the neoliberalism colonizing more and more of everyday life. Despite its early promise as a social-planning tool, Twittering is becoming a self-referential operation; we project things that make us feel important and pretend that it is for the benefit of unseen (and, in fact, often indifferent) others."

“Tweet Nothings: Twitterrhea and Monetized Friendship,” by Rob Horning Generation Bubble