Not Bernado Bertolucci.

It used to be that the thing one had to fear most, especially a self-respecting, self-aware person of even average intellect, was that like promising untold riches on ones web-browser. Then we all got ourselves internet-enabled antivirus software and the risk of a Not-Safe-For-Work pornado has receded mightily. Nowadays, in the social-media era, it is not pornados that are annoying; it is Twitter monologues.

The one who pioneered this exercise in self-indulgent, babbling bullshit should be shot. In the head. Twice! How any self-respecting adult with a smidgen of self-control could put unsuspecting users of Twitter through that crap beggars belief. The most recent "monologues" seem to have been about the oldest question in the book: how do men and women get together? and the second oldest question in the book: do we want to know about it?

I am not a Twitter celebrity, and that is fine. Sunny Bindra is a celebrity on Twitter in my eyes; his 55,000+ followers are proof that the author and management guru has a positive impact on our lives even if we will never meet. Jackson Biko is a celebrity on Twitter too; if you have had opportunity to read through bikozulu.co.ke you will understand why. The kinds of people who tweet monologues, especially the ones that tend towards to the risque and salacious, are the reason why treading through the streets of witter takes a certain kind of weary wariness that deadens the soul and reminds one that  public displays of self-indulgent bullshit are frowned on for a reason: they are cringeworthy to the nth degree.

Then we have the legions of entertainers, a much-abused word of late, that make music, movies, read news, and generally make themselves notorious, infamous and "famous." For better or for worse, they define where our "entertainment" industry has reached. Then come the socialites about whom I refuse to speculate. In any case, given their notorieties, we do want to know about them and their llives, just as US citizens seem obsessed with the Kimyes, Brangelinas and whatever schlub whose heart Taylor Swift happens to break this week happens to be. They entertain us - and we have turned their personal lives into more entertainment.

So far I am unable to see the entertainment value in Twitter monologues; they are rarely funny, well-written, witty or smart-tart. They frequently have, especially over the past week or so, a whiff of the me-too about them, and not in an edifying way. They are the wave of flotsam and jetsam that gets washed back to shore long after the tsunami has devastated the coastline. They are the gag-inducing backwash from a rancid bottle of Kibao gin. They are the crass, San Fernando Valley version of Bernado Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. And in extreme cases, you tend to need a forty-minute shower afterwards.

I cannot imagine even the crassest Kenyan version of Us Weekly spending time, money and manpower attempting to dig up more on the purveyors of Twitter monologues. Now I may be out of touch with the trending topics. So be it. I may be fuddy-daddy-ish in my sensibilities. So be it. But tell me, honestly, do you find anything redeeming or edifying in a Kenyan Twitter Monologue? If you do, Lord Help us, then we have greater, more serious problems than how someone attempted to swindle eight hundred and twenty six million shillings out of the National Youth Service.