Some weeks ago, while on his campaign trail in Baltimore, US President Barack Obama baked the perfect macaroon of a one liner. In an attempt to dismiss his Republican opponent Mitt Romney, the President said how, “You can pretty much put their campaign on a tweet and have some characters to spare”.

Oh, this is going to be addictive- Dom Sagolla, Twitter co-creator

This string of 16 words has such nimble feet and mental clarity that it will be quoted in the history books. It was checkmate in one move; a show of such condensed wit that it could be the perfect tweet itself.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of the more than 175 million tweets that are sent every day. True, a few of them are precious, especially those fired from Stephen Fry’s keyboard. But the rest are a pure waste of space – 140 confused characters in search of an author.

You can actually fit most tweets in just three categories.

The first category is for pseudo-motivational and psychobabble tweets. Justin Bieber’s are my favourite, but not in a good way. “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them,” the Canadian singer once tweeted. Now where have we heard that one before? “Everything is possible. When you make a choice, you change the future.” Now that is so obvious you don’t even say it.

The second category is for warring tweets – people taking it out on each other for all the tweeting world to see. So many poisoned pens (virtual, of course) that it looks like a verbal Hieronymus Bosch painting.

The final category is for the self-publicists – people telling us what they are having for breakfast, what dress they are wearing for work, that they are stuck in traffic and that they are still breathing.

Their every move, even the most mundane and inane, is recorded for their 15 seconds of fame.

And summer, especially, brings out the worst of these self-publicists. There they are, telling us that the hotel is lovely, that the food in Vietnam is out of this world, that summer in the Eternal City is a slice of heaven, that Paris is still as beautiful as ever, and that their holiday is going swimmingly.

I mean, if the whole point of going on holiday was to get rid of us, then they are missing the point. Especially with those of us who are stuck here.

techeditor@timesofmalta.com