And while I don’t participate with any sort of regularity, I do wholeheartedly embrace the fine art of encapsulation. When life throws its armadillos under my chassis, one of the first places I run is SMITH, to record the moment in perfect, petite, posterity. And for my efforts, I’ve been delightfully rewarded. I read my Six-Word Memoir, Orgasm. Schmorgasm. A vibrator can’t spoon, on the same stage with Amy Tan. I won a dating advice book about why we don’t call bad dates back with, That booty call only rang once. And I just got my first Six-Word Memoirist of the Day accolade last week with Ex-Twitterer. New Urban Dictionary entry: ‘Quitterer’.

That’s right. I quit Twitter. I’m a ‘Quitterer.’

Which might seem odd, considering Twitter is nothing *but* encapsulation, and a 140-character limit should have been a natural fit for the soul of my wit’s brevities.

But here’s what I’ve learned about myself in the past six months I’ve been Networking Socially: I have become the Fire-haired Fürer of Stalker Nation.

Four months ago, you could have never convinced me to join Twitter. Not even Greg Olear’s post, with his helpful how-to manual, could sway me in my convictions. “No one wants to know what I am doing every minute of the day,” I would moan when anyone asked me if I had joined Twitter. I had only recently joined Facebook two months previous and I was already deep in the den of the Time-Suck/Stalk-fest, so I knew that Twitter would most likely steal the remaining three hours I had left in my day; time that would have otherwise been spent on sleep, or food, or urination.

And I like to pee. It’s one of my favorite excretory activities.

Then, I got an invitation to join the 140 Film Project. Inspired by Twitter, a filmmaker in Ireland was assembling a group of 140 filmmakers from around the world, who would collectively film 140 seconds of footage simultaneously around the theme “Connections” and then edit it together as a feature film. The catch was, however, that you had to join Twitter for the collective ‘Action’ and ‘Cut.’ So, not wanting to miss out on being involved with something either as tragically disastrous or wildly successful as that, against my better judgment, I signed up for Twitter and filmed my 140 seconds for the project.

* * * * *

Now with Facebook, I had come to an agreement with myself that my postings there would fall into one of three categories: Business announcements (screenings, writing, readings, etc), funny observations about Life in New York, and food porn. Nothing too personal and nothing too boring.

But because no one was really following me on Twitter but a few actual friends, I allowed myself a little more freedom to be silly.

And swear.

And be snarky:

And it was fun.

For a while.

But then I found myself more and more often with my iPhone at the ready – tweeting as I was walking down the street, going to the movies, at a restaurant, out with friends, watching Mad Men. All the things I used to HATE about other people in New York.

I remember being a once-proud Luddite, using my iPhone only as God had intended it: an iPod.

When I had nothing ‘twitty’ to say, I found myself checking on my friends, too. Had they posted? What were they doing? And if I’d been absent too long – What did I miss? I would scroll through back updates, trying to find the conversation thread among the myriad of RTs, @s and #s.

I was quickly becoming a stalker, approved and encouraged under the Downy-soft moniker of Social Networking. And it was starting to scare me.

I had a stalker once. A real one. Bona fide. I was selling my apartment, a process that is supposed to remain anonymous, but somehow someone found my name and then Googled me (I assume). This was at the height of the success of my short documentary, Why We Wax, and this person started sending me emails not only about my apartment, but about a whole host of unsavory things. I dismissed him as a nut job and thought nothing more of it, until he showed up at my apartment for several open houses and contacted my broker for private showings – always asking increasingly personal questions about me. After the stalker lost the final bid for the apartment he went away, thankfully, but it was enough to really, truly, scare me into critically analyzing what I’m putting ‘out there’ into the world for people to see.

And on Twitter, I found myself getting sucked in to our newly dubbed ‘Confessional Culture’ – hours of sound and fury signifying... well... you know. I felt like nothing more than one more dissonant trumpet blaring into the cacophony. And it began to bother me. I revisited my original question posed just months before: “Does anyone really want to know what I am doing every minute of the day?” and I’m certain the answer would be a resounding, “No.”

Not that people don’t care-care, but as is, I’m sure, the case with many others ‘out there’, I became increasingly obsessed with people’s updates as well as striving to create my own pithy tweets that would both inform AND amuse. But in all honesty, it was nothing more than out of self-distraction than true concern or interest for real communication. I wasn’t actually talking to people, I was talking ‘@’ people, and as a lifelong lover of actual human interaction – reading facial expressions, slapping someone on the shoulder, the delightful harmony of two peoples’ laughter intermingling; the original social networking – I found myself to be ‘all thumbs’ when it came to this newer breed.

My life was rapidly down-spiraling towards “Peep” rather than “Pop” and so it was finally time to call it quits.

* * * * *

Naturally, there will be things that I’ll miss. The spirited chat-room feeling between friends spread across the globe, the stream of hilarious obscenities from @shitmydadsays and the fun I would have with trending games like #failedbroadwayshowtitles or #lacklusterblockbusters.

But what I get back is a small part of my sanity. Real-life peer-to-peer contact. Direct status updates. A little more face time and a little less screen time.

It’s not like I’m leaving the internet. Hell, no. I merely chose the lesser of two evils.

I’m a proud and happy ‘Quitterer.’

For as we all know, based on another Six-Word Memoir submission:

It’s not stalking if it’s Facebook.

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A few interesting, related articles:

The Wall Street Journal

The New York Times