Tweet, Tweet, Tweet. That’s no birdie in the background. That’s Twitter, and though it’s growing increasingly popular, I wish it would stay quiet.

For those of you who don’t know—i.e. anyone not-living in the “I” obsessed U.S. (see ipod, imac, ivillage, I, I, I….)—Twitter is a hybrid facebook, blog, real-time forum that turns what this writer typically thinks of as the wonderful world of social media into a big bag of pooh. I mean, really. Do I care that Jason in Wisconsin is eating a cookie? No. No. And no.

You may be wondering what the Sam hell this has to do with gambling. Patience, grasshoppers.

In fact, Twitter has everything to do with gambling; namely poker, and a certain online poker player type that those of us over the age of 50—i.e. yours truly—look upon with as much affection as we look upon mosquitoes.

This player type runs rampant in online casinos. His user name is usually something like Beavis89 or JetStream85 (the numbers indicate the year he was born) and he makes chat comments that generally start with “dude” or “dawg”. Typically he’s a hyped-up college kid who lives on a steady diet of Twinkies, red bull and weed—or whatever the kids are smoking these days—and his gaming education is limited to the phrase “go big or go home”.

Bitter, party of 1? Bitter….

I joke (or am I joking about joking?) but I do have a point, and it’s this: these are the types who support the Twitter obsession, a phenomenon that has turned once respectable pro poker players into dithering fools.

Really, do I need to know who peed next to who at the WSOP or which past bracelet winner passed out in the Palms pool?

Yes, I’m old; and no, I’m not tech savvy. But I love poker—the game, not the antics. Personally, I think they ought to call it Bzzz.com instead of Twitter. There are no dignified songbirds at the Twitter table, only mosquitoes that suck focus from the game.

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