Sometimes, Twitter isn't the center of the universe

I was on vacation, checked out, on the beach, dude, when I heard about the crash of Asiana Flight 214. My news-y instincts kicked in, as they always do, always pissing off my friends and family, and I started to Tweet. Oh, was I clever and quick. I've already aggregated so many critical information streams, scanner feeds, photo feeds, Twitter accounts, and websites that it was quite easy to become a hub of information in no time, even though I'm not a pilot, not a San Franciscan, have no human sources in the Bay Area, and have no access to the larger canvasses of television or radio.

Go me. After a few minutes of Tweeting, my stream started to fill itself with meta-Tweets, or Tweets about Tweeting. They were self-congratulatory Tweets from people who spend their days on Twitter. They were snarky encomiums directed towards the weekend assignment editors and back-up anchors on broadcasts who were clueless, maudlin, and rambly. Then, one person on the plane Tweeted a picture of the crashed jet, and suddenly, the meta-Tweets iterated. You are now participating in the real-time Twittering of a plane crash! (Hey, what's that about a Canadian plane crash, or dozens dead in Egypt? Nevermind. I can listen to the San Francisco Fire Department scanner online now.)

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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.