Normally I wouldn’t relay the highlights of any conversation that goes on in a hockey locker room, because, hey, I have kids. And someday they’ll read this. But last night there was a brief and fairly comical discussion about Twitter, the new hottest trend on the internet. You know something has gone mainstream when you put a bunch of 25-40 year old guys together from varying walks of life and Twitter is the topic of conversation. Most of the guys in the locker room were completely dismissive, one went so far as to say that he would enjoy punching anyone in the face who had a Twitter account and used it. Most viewed it as useless.

One guy, though, hit a double when he said it was just something that the press is tripping over themselves about and that’s the reason for its snowballing. To me, it’s a chicken-and-egg thing. Is Twitter so good that it deserves the building hype and seemingly endless press coverage? Or is the press’s insatiable desire to pump something up and then move on to the next thing just rearing its head as usual? I don’t know the answer to this. I DO know that first it was Friendster, then it was MySpace, then it was Facebook and now it’s Twitter. I do believe Twitter has some very strong value and I can make a very good argument for that, although I didn’t in the locker room. That said, I do think there’s some level of over-hype there as well.

Final hockey locker room quote about Twitter: “I don’t give a fuck what you had to eat today.”