On Tuesday Maureen Dowd published one of the worst interviews I’ve ever seen, in that she conducted an in-person interview with the creators of Twitter that read like a poorly-conducted e-mail interview (where all of the questions are predetermined and there is no possibility for follow-up). Her position is evident in her column when she writes before the interview, “I sat down with Biz Stone, 35, and Evan Williams, 37, and asked them to justify themselves.” Apparently, all of the people using Twitter are not justification enough. Thankfully, Stone and Williams gave hilarious answers to Dowd’s stupid questions. A sample:
ME: I heard about a woman who tweeted her father’s funeral. Whatever happened to private pain?
EVAN: I have private pain every day.
ME: If you were out with a girl and she started twittering about it in the middle, would that be a deal-breaker or a turn-on?
BIZ (dryly): In the middle of what?
ME: Do you ever think “I don’t care that my friend is having a hamburger?”
BIZ: If I said I was eating a hamburger, Evan would be surprised because I’m a vegan.
…
ME: Was there anything in your childhood that led you to want to destroy civilization as we know it?
BIZ: You mean enhance civilization, make it even better?
ME: What’s your favorite book?
BIZ: I loved Sherlock Holmes when I was a kid.
ME: But you’ve helped destroy mystery.
BIZ: When you put more information out there, sometimes you can just put a little bit of it out, which just makes the mystery even broader.
…
ME: Have you thought about using even fewer than 140 characters?
BIZ: I’ve seen people twitter in haiku only. Twit-u. James Buck, the student who was thrown into an Egyptian prison, just wrote “Arrested.”
ME: I would rather be tied up to stakes in the Kalahari Desert, have honey poured over me and red ants eat out my eyes than open a Twitter account. Is there anything you can say to change my mind?
BIZ: Well, when you do find yourself in that position, you’re gonna want Twitter. You might want to type out the message “Help.”
Via: Daring Fireball
Memoirs of a SLACer 