Why Am I Following This?

The ubiquitous micro-blogging service known as Twitter needs no introduction. Finally, people who were formerly forced to scream at the top of their lungs on crowded subway cars or shout down the gullets of wishing wells have a place to transcribe literally every thought that enters their head, 140 characters at a time. If you've ever wished you could turn real life into a 1990's era AOL chat room called "TOTALLY RANDOM," Twitter is here for you. Everyone has one and I read all of them – or at least enough to ask myself "Why am I following this?"

Regardless of where you stand on her politics, Sarah Palin's Twitter is a beautiful mess. She can take textbook political platitudes like acknowledging the passing of Martin Luther King Jr. and make them look like they were typed by a hungry dog.

Part of the appeal of Twitter is that it serves as a direct conduit to celebrities, and with politicians especially the garbage chute goes both ways. It's possible that Palin sees Twitter as another opportunity to prove she's not an intellectual elitist by going rogue from the mainstream English language and cramming her tweets with so many letter and digit word substitutions that I'm not convinced it doesn't contain the DaVinci Code.

Best of all, the monkey-on-a-typewriter theory dictates that it's only a matter of time before her alphabet soup unintentionally spells a career damaging slur or otherwise hilarious typo gaffe. My money is on "F @ RT."

The fact that Grover is wishing us goodnight at 5:20 in the afternoon speaks volumes about who this Twitter account is probably for. I was surprised enough to find out elderly people were flocking to Twitter, but has the fad also penetrated the preschool end of the pants-crapping spectrum?

A quick glance at their followers is a typically unhelpful glut of moms, family interest groups and nostalgic Gen Y'ers having bathroom sex in faux-vintage Snuffleupagus hoodies. But does anyone need in-character dispatches from some CTW intern in the late stages of "felt lung," telling us that Big Bird went roller skating?

Sesame Street has always encouraged reading to children at an early age, but any parent who only has time to read 140 characters is probably so busy playing Bejeweled Blitz that their ant-covered skeleton baby is deader than Mr. Hooper by now.

All obvious jokes from the meme mill aside, is Louie Anderson dead? Google seems to indicate otherwise, but his Twitter was abandoned last September with one cryptic final message: "Happy Labor Day Weeken Everyone." It's the kind of terse, half-written farewell that might have preceded him showing up on the evening news firing a shotgun into parked cars, but the truth is probably far less entertaining: he's busy doing stand-up.

Although IMDB tosses him only a handful of credits in the past decade (and nothing after 2006) Anderson performs in Las Vegas 40 weeks a year, the kind of gig most career comics past their touring prime would stab Howie Mandel in the back of the neck for. Still, savvier comics have learned to use Twitter as a tool, testing out one-liners and announcing tour dates. Louie Anderson's account,guarded by one creepy-ass upside-down avatar, is a half-hearted time capsule to nothing.

I first noticed Alyssa Milano when I was 12 on an episode of the Outer Limits remake. As best I can remember, she played a frequently undressed nymphomaniac alien made out of goo. The current-model Alyssa Milano might not be made of CGI goo, but her Twitter account is a firehose of equal parts sap and cheese.

From gushing over (co-star?) @NathanFillion, to methodically responding to every banal question you throw her (she crochets, but doesn't stick with it!), Alyssa's Twitter stream is somehow BURSTING with emptiness. She's an all-American girl who loves baseball, dogs, and most of all, you.

In addition to the heavy fan-love, she's a relentless retweeter of links and peppers everything with Wingdings, keeping her online presence almost as sexy as a meeting of the Yearbook committee. Twitter-era pubescent boys hoping for phonepics from the changing room would do better to rent Poison Ivy II.

The creepy thing about marketing departments getting in on social networking fads is that no corporation needs a Twitter account, but if they don't have one it looks weird. Plus, it leaves the door open for some college kid to snag the Starbucks URL and start offering people "Fartaccinos" and Grande Mocha Boners.

The best/worst part about the Starbucks feed is that something like one out of three tweets is an apology for some poor employee screwing up a drink; a soul crushing reminder that every advancement in communication technology will be used first and foremost to gripe. As long as you're asking some marketing intern to climb off the internet and fix your coffee drink for you, you may as well have them wipe the macchiato syrup off the patch sewn onto your parka so the driver of the half-bus knows which corner to drop you off at.