Writing on the New Yorker’s website, George Packer decries Twitter.

The truth is, I feel like yelling Stop quite a bit these days. Every time I hear about Twitter I want to yell Stop. The notion of sending and getting brief updates to and from dozens or thousands of people every few minutes is an image from information hell. I’m told that Twitter is a river into which I can dip my cup whenever I want. But that supposes we’re all kneeling on the banks. In fact, if you’re at all like me, you’re trying to keep your footing out in midstream, with the water level always dangerously close to your nostrils. Twitter sounds less like sipping than drowning.

Like me, Packer was freaked out by David Carr’s column on Twitter in which Carr raved about how essential Twitter had become to his life. Also like me, Packer wonders if there isn’t an almost (perhaps not almost) physiological reason why the Times’ media critic is so enamored of a steady stream of Tweets.

I wrote:

This is a bit of a cheap shot, but since Carr himself has written about it extensively, I’ll go there: I wonder if his fondness for Twitter has anything to do with his much self-documented addictive personality. Wouldn’t Twitter hold particular appeal for a cocaine/adrenaline/information junkie?

Packer begins this section by quoting Carr and seconds my thought:

“There is always something more interesting on Twitter than whatever you happen to be working on,” [Carr writes].

This last is what really worries me. Who doesn’t want to be taken out of the boredom or sameness or pain of the present at any given moment? That’s what drugs are for, and that’s why people become addicted to them. Carr himself was once a crack addict (he wrote about it in “The Night of the Gun”). Twitter is crack for media addicts. It scares me, not because I’m morally superior to it, but because I don’t think I could handle it. I’m afraid I’d end up letting my son go hungry.

Whereas I just think I’m morally superior to it.

Just kidding. Like Packer, I fear the transformation of thought from a deep, sustaining meal to a package of Pringles—terrible for you, but once you start eating them….

And yes, I recognize that blogging isn’t exactly Remembrance of Things Past. As many of you have reminded me, blog posts can be dashed-off, careless things that later have to be walked back. But there is a gradation, and somewhere along this scale from Proust to blogging to Tweeting thought becomes trivial—yet, on Twitter, incessant. (Would we think differently about it if they had called it Chatter? Think about it.)

Unlike Packer, I’ve used Twitter a few times, just to make sure that I’m not simply being a curmudgeon.  I’ve not yet found anything for which I truly need Twitter; I am insufficiently self-important to think that I have need of instantaneous information. (And fortunately I haven’t been in any disasters where that could be useful…or not.) Anything one could Tweet to me, one could email to me. Or just…you know…tell me.

And to be entirely frank, this fact provides with a sense of profound relief. I’m so glad I don’t need Twitter. Another endless stream of information is more 411 than I could handle–it’s like putting your mouth under a flowing faucet and being unable to move away.

Writing in response to Packer on the NYTimes “Bits” blog, Nick Bilton disagrees.

Hundreds of thousands of people now rely on Twitter every day for their business. Food trucks and restaurants around the world tell patrons about daily food specials. Corporations use the service to handle customer service issues. Starbucks, Dell, Ford, JetBlue and many more companies use Twitter to offer discounts and coupons to their customers. Public relations firms, ad agencies, schools, the State Department — even President Obama — now use Twitter and other social networks to share information.

Which only emphasizes another point that I’ve been making for months: The great advocates of Twitter, and the great users of Twitter, are all trying to sell you something. (Even if what they’re selling is only Twitter.) How wonderful that food trucks around the world are using Twitter to broadcast their daily specials. But I’ve managed to make it so far without that information, and my stomach generally thanks me for it. Likewise I have managed to survive without coupons from Starbucks, Dell and Ford.

Perhaps sensing the weakness of his argument, Bilton continues:

There are communication and scholarly uses. Right now, an astronaut, floating 250 miles above the Earth, is using Twitter and conversing with people all over the globe, answering both mundane and scientific questions about living on a space station.

I love that Bilton says Twitter has “communication uses.” That’s the kind of thought that you get when you Tweet. It only means something if you don’t think about it. It’s like defending cars by saying that they have “transportation uses.”

Moreover, I hope that astronauts floating 250 miles above the Earth surely have better things to do with their time than answering “mundane” questions, or else the NASA budget really does need to be cut.

But Bilton, unfazed, continues:

Most importantly, Twitter is transforming the nature of news, the industry from which Mr. Packer reaps his paycheck. The news media are going through their most robust transformation since the dawn of the printing press, in large part due to the Internet and services like Twitter. After this metamorphosis takes place, everyone will benefit from the information moving swiftly around the globe.

You can see that change beginning to take place. During the protests in Iran last year, ordinary Iranians shared information through Twitter about the government atrocities taking place.

This is the great Twitter defense, already a cliche, and on second thought it is pablum. As we now know, about half the information on Twitter during the Iranian protests was put there by the government—which is to say, it was disinformation; Twitter does not discriminate between truth and propaganda, and as suggested above, the majority of users are propagandists, whether they hail from corporate American or dictatorial Tehran.

In any case, it is not a serious argument to say that the media is changing and once it’s done changing, “everyone will benefit.” Simply using the word “transforming” does not make a phenomenon true or good. “Transforming” is a Twitter word. It takes a non-Twitter level of thought to realize that, in this case, it’s just bullshit.

I expect that Bilton is right and Twitter isn’t going away. But how can a thing be so wonderful when so many people wish that it would?