Is communicating in short banal bursts impairing our capacity to think, shrinking our vocabularies and attention spans. To illustrate, I have the Tweet thread of Plato’s famous defense of Socrates, The Apologia, where he is calling on his fellow students to help save his beloved teacher from capital punishment on corruption of youth charges.
You probably remember this story from the Disney Movie version.
@Plato: Prostititus, our great teacher Socrates could be facing a death sentence. For spurious accusations of impiety.
@Prostatitus: Hang on. I’m looking up spurious.
@Aristophanes: Tell him to shave his beard and wear a conservative tunic. He’ll be fine.
@Plato: True wisdom belongs to the gods, he insists. This is an attempt to show humility and virtue. Is that impiety?
@Cannibis: Prostititis, how was Glucosamine’s party last night?
@Prostatitus: It was an out-of-control zoo! He had a real zoo. Snakes, boars, monkeys! His theatre friends.
@Plato: Why haven’t we heard from Glucosamine on all this?
@Cannibis: His server’s out.
@Plato: Can we all meet up and talk… Say at The International House of Spanakopita?
@Cannibis: They don’t have wifi.
@Aristophanes: Idea! Plea bargn? So they sentence him to Sicily. Yea they break ur knees if you mis a protection payment. But it’s better thn a hemlock cocktail
@Cannibis: Great idea. And Plato, if he goes, tell him he has to try the baked ziti.
@Plato: Fellow Athenians. Socrates believes death could be a great blessing. That’s another indication of his belief in the immortal.
@Prostititus: If death is so great, why am I paying my doctor 80 drachmas a week for colonics?
@Aristophanes: I thought it was to help unaddle your brains?
@Cannibis: LOL. LOL. LOL.
@Prostititus: Spurious, I found it. Doubtful for lack of evidence. As in Aristophanes is witty.
@Cannibis: LOL. LOL. LOL.
@Aristophanes: Plato, I’m too old for this stress. I’m looking after my own health these days. I’ve totally cut out sodomy.
@Plato: What!
@Aristophanes: Mistake! It’s this damn autocorrect! I’ve cut out sodium.
@Prostatitis: Plato, I’m on Facebook now! In Farmville. Can’t be there 4 Socrates, but I’m gifting him a cow and a sunburst cloud.
@Plato: Prostititis, go to Linked-In. I’m endorsing you for being an imbecile.
@Cannibis: LOL. LOL. LOL.
@Prostititis: And Plato, I’m endorsing you for your little child-care sleep-overs! Platonic, schmatonic. Stop makin’ a fool of yourself.
@Cannibis: LOL. LOL. LOL.
@Glucosamine: Server’s back! My party was amazing. Especially when the Dionysius crowd showed up.
@Plato: Glucosamine, your last email was insulting. It said, Give it a rest! Plato, you’re just Dumb. That’s crude and disrespectful.
@Glucosamine: Plato, Dumb is my tweet for “You’re “Dickin’ up my bandwidth.”
@Plato: Please excuse my cyber illiteracy. But don’t you see that Athenian courts are using juridical travesty to eliminate free thought and rational thinking.
@Glucosamine: Plato, don’t get me involved in this disrespecting the gods thing. I like all the gods, goddesses, demigods, even those creepy centaur things
@Cannibis: Who’s ur favorite?
@Glucosamine: I like them all… the Fates, the Muses, the Graces, all those naked river nymphs, the Pleides, the Oreads…
@Plato: Glucosamine, calm down! Nobody’s recording this.
@ Glucosamine: You can bet your ass the government is. I like the olive grove nymphs, nymphs of the walnut trees, the Alseides. Who’d I leave out?
@Cannibis: The Meliai.
@Glucosamine: Who the hell r the Meliai?
@Cannibis: Nymphs of the ash trees.
@Glucosamine: We have nymphs in our ash trees? Damn,
@Cannibis: We’re Greek. We have nymphs everywhere!
@Prostititus: Except in my bedroom!
@Glucosamine: I told you, get a webpage on Athenian Singles! Or, Spartan Singles, if you’re into S&M.
@Cannibis: For the record, Zeus is my favorite. Love it when he morphs into animals and screws babes all over the archipelago.
@Plato: Socrates says we learn the rules of moral goodness and truth from ALL the immortals.
@Glucosamine: I believe in that too! I just hate trying to read it in pig entrails!
@Glucosamine: BTW Plato, if this is so urgent, why isn’t Socrates tweeting all this stuff himself?
@Prostititus: He spends all his time correcting Wikipedia. You ask him a question, he asks you a question back. No wonder they want to kill him!
@Plato: I don’t understand how you can all abandon the man who made Athens the capital of intellectual inquiry!
@Aristophanes: Hold on. The actress playing Lysistrata is sexting me. OMG. OMG. OMG.
@Cannibis: Post it! Put it up on Icloud.
@Aristophanes: No way! I got murder threats when I put up my play — about Atlas caught grab-assing Hercules at the agora!
@Plato: Gentle citizens, the intellectual legacy of Athens is at stake here. What do we have to say for ourselves?
@Glucosamine: Does anybody have the new Angry Birds app?
@Prostititus: Yeah, I got it from Herpes. It has a virus.
@Plato: News just in! Due to his academic legacy, S could just pay a fine. COURT’S CONSIDERING IT if he comes up with cash. If we all chipped in, say
@Glucosamine: Damn, my server’s out again!
@Aristophanes: Plato, you only have a 140 characters. Didn’t get your question. Gotta go.
@Cannibis: Plato, fear not. I can help. I just got an email from Nigeria that I’ve inherited 900 million drachmae if I send my account info!
@Prostititis: Plato, remind him I already gifted him a milk cow and a sunburst cloud.
@Oracle Verison: Plato, you have run out of air time! Please visit your Verison outlet at the Acropolis.
