It's been said often enough regarding our current cultural moment: We've all become a little too desperate for the immediate validation provided by Facebook Likes, comments, and retweets. For various media types and minor celebrities, Twitter especially has become a way to safely interact with fans, gather more fans around you, and promote your latest work to that ever growing band of followers. Your number of followers is seen as a true marker of status and clout, and if you aren't on there every day, posting idle thoughts, funny news stories, or photos of your lunch, you barely exist in the minds of those who believe that Twitter activity now equates with existence. But as much as I have a business obligation to pay attention to Twitter, I've frequently been baffled by those people who appear to spend hours a day chatting with followers, posting their thoughts and reposting those of dozens of their virtual acquaintances, and maintaining disjointed conversations in 140-character bits across hours and days with many more dozens. Without stumbling into Luddite territory here, I just want to ask: Is Twitter truly a useful tool for the majority of us, or is it more just a perfect venue for the attention starved and idle lonely to pretend, together, that they are neither of those things?

I realize that even in asking this question I will incite an onslaught of "you just don't get it" type reactions, and I recognize that Twitter is — or has been in recent years — many things to many people. But the percentage of people who spend a lot of time interacting on the platform is relatively small — only about a quarter of Twitter's billion or so users are considered "active" and 43 percent have not tweeted in the last year — compared to those who just use it passively to track news, and jokes from comedians. Twitter's traction even among its especially audience-hungry users may already be fading. The Atlantic published a eulogy for Twitter a year ago, noting that in-the-know media types were already letting their accounts go dormant as the "signal to noise ratio" got worse and worse in their feeds. And according to a new Pew Research survey, teenagers aren't using Twitter nearly as much as they use Facebook and Instagram — only about a third of teens report using Twitter at all, versus 71 percent who use Facebook, and a little over half who use Instagram.

I'll admit, there's something about the versatility, community, and usefulness of Facebook that I've always preferred — not to mention the algorithm helping to curate posts from those friends and acquaintances who actually amuse or interest me most, and the decade I've now spent building that base of friends, colleagues, and long-ago classmates. And I've been forced, by working in media, to reluctantly maintain a presence on Twitter via professional accounts belonging to sites I've worked for, and my personal account remains pretty quiet most days because I don't have time to look at or think about it — though I am occasionally amused to see what news Mia Farrow thinks is important on a given day, now that Mia Farrow thinks it's her job to curate news on Twitter, all day. My friends have all heard this before: I'm a bit of a Twitter hater.

But I get confronted with peers in media who would consider me, still, an out-of-touch stick in the mud for not being omnipresent with my own Twitter handle. Example: I, admittedly, published a snippy open letter last year to two tech writers at the New York Times who printed a conversation they had upon both departing San Francisco — a conversation that epitomized what many current SF residents are frustrated by, as the tech-employed and tech-obsessed try to define the city in their image, rather than join and appreciate a culture that has taken shape here outside of laptops and mobile devices. And in response, a defender/online friend of one of these writers lashed back at me with several public @ replies implying that I must be nobody given how long it had been since I last tweeted anything from my personal account. I immediately got defensive, which is the worst thing one can do, because I actually started to question if I had undermined my own credibility by not posting panda photos and Smiths lyrics each day just to maintain a "presence" in this world, and build a following.

Much bigger celebrities than the media types discussed in the Atlantic piece figured out a couple of years ago that being too honest on Twitter (perhaps especially while intoxicated) only led to trouble, and maybe it was best to let one's PR people take charge of one's Twitter account. I'll wager that newly named future Daily Show host Trevor Noah now sees that using Twitter as a place to test out some often edgy, sometimes sexist and otherwise offensive jokes was not such a great idea in retrospect. (Same for that PR woman, Justine Sacco, who tweeted the AIDS in Africa joke that effectively ruined her life.) Not only have people realized that Twitter is increasingly full of noise and bullies, it's also a venue for easy missteps that go too easily viral and are too quickly accessed in the archive. It's a place for strangers to mock one another, facelessly, and for bullies to gather gangs of gleeful mockers behind them in a breathless, often cruel, virtual version of a grade school playground. And it's simultaneously a place where very serious accusations — the Farrows' abuse allegations against Woody Allen come to mind — can now get leveled and gain legs, in spite of the overall triviality and disposability of most of what takes place on the platform.

Sure a lot of this same stuff occurs daily on Facebook too, but there at least seems to be more accountability and control there — you never have to make status updates public, and if you end up with a bully among the people you've called Friends, it's easy enough to remove them and make sure they never bother you again. But give a little fuel to one bully who's clever and entertaining enough to have thousands of Twitter followers behind them, and they could berate you behind your back for days, to their amused audience, and you'd have little or no recourse to stop them. Even Twitter's own CEO Dick Costolo recently admitted in a leaked memo that the company "sucks at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform, and we've sucked at it for years."

So, honestly, the reason I haven't retweeted that witty thing you said yesterday is because I only have time to go on there to pimp links, because that's part of my job description — because some percentage of SFist's readers prefer to get their news on Twitter, and that's fine. But I don't foresee myself ever finding that time, or ever warming up to Twitter as a personal platform, because it's just not that important to me to see what Ashton Kutcher's having for breakfast, and I almost never have less than 140 characters to say. Even early adopter Courtney Love skips tweeting for days at a time lately, so now I'm starting to feel like it's a fad I opted out of that's already on the wane.

And if you're still tweeting your vacation pics and chatting up reality TV personalities while drinking your wine and watching reality TV at night, I'm not going to begrudge you that pleasure. I'm sure your Twitter friends are super fun. I just prefer actual friends.

Related: Most Teens Actually Still Using Facebook
Twitter: Most Powerful Social Medium Ever, Or Endless Stream Of Drivel? Discuss.

"Tech Culture" — that nebulous boogeyman currently haunting San Francisco — is there anything it can't ruin? Esteemed San Francisco Chronicle food critic and lifestyle blogger Michael Bauer is on a rant over on Inside Scoop today. Well, it's a tech rant wrapped up in a trend piece shrouded in haute cuisine food writing, to obfuscate things further. Fixed-price menus are making a comeback, but they're coming back all wrong. Someone must be blamed.

For what it's worth, the trend is replacing the regrettable small plate movement that plagued us for so many years, Bauer says. "Yet despite what many people thought," he continues, "the fixed price menu is on the rise, whether it’s at the bare-bones Palace in the Mission or the must-order offerings at Commonwealth."

Notable joints like Aziza are seeing an upswing in fixed price diners and even trendsetting AQ in SoMa is dropping a la carte options (although they've got little brother TBD next door for the casual diner). But there's something more sinister about this most recent trend towards the tasting menu. It's too fast-paced. To figure out what's been driving this new trend to wolf down 14 courses in under two and a half hours? Bauer turns his critical eye, honed sharply over more than two and a half decades of dining out in San Francisco, to the city's lifestyle threat du jour: Tech Culture.

The leisurely pace associated with multi courses has morphed into something else, I realized. A couple of weeks ago some colleagues were in town and some went to Benu and Saison, both of which offer tasting menus with more than 10 courses. I was surprised by my colleagues’ complaint: the food came too fast. At Saison the diners were out within 2.5 hours, and at Benu my friends would have finished in record time but they asked the waiter to slow the pace.

That made me realize there’s another trend afoot in San Francisco: time at the table. Diners still want the tasting menu but fueled, I think, by the tech culture, they don’t want to spend three to five hours enjoying it. The restaurants realized this fact and adjusted their style to accommodate.

[Inside Scoop]

A disgruntled anti-Googler has put up this large-scale poster, poetically decrying the search engine's inexorable reach into our lives. It reads:

I'm watching you/ I'm targeting you. I'm searching for you. I'm tracking you. I know where you live. I have pictures of your block. I have pictures of your house. I put you on the map. I know where you spend your money. I tell you were to spend your money. I want your money. I am money. I sell your information. I read your email. I know you watch porn. I help you watch porn. I killed the encyclopedia. I'm Big Brother's little helper. I am Big Brother. I'm a Big Brotha Mutha Fucka. I'm a noun and a verb. I'm above the law. I bought the law. I'm out of control. I AM GOOGLE and I own you. I OWN YOU ... and I stole this city's soul.

Startup co-founder Peter Shih — whose anti-San Francisco rant sparked an outcry that, among other things, resulted in these flyers strewn about town on Friday — published an apology over the weekend. Shih's screed, if you recall, attacked transgender folks, women, cyclists, and Karl (just to name a few).

"I want to sincerely apologize to everyone who read my poorly written blog post about San Francisco. I made idiotic and childish, but worse yet, thoughtless, hurtful and offensive comments that I am deeply sorry about," Shih writes in a blog post regarding his misogynistic and violent missive. "There are no excuses for my poor judgment, so I make none. I take full responsibility that this mistake was completely my own."

"I don't deserve any forgiveness for the stupidity of my actions and words, but I sincerely hope to demonstrate by my future behavior to humbly build up and not tear down the communities and people around me," he adds.

Shih's initial piece, since removed (but thanks to Susie Cagle, you can view it here), prompted simmering contempt for new tech money funneling in the Bay Area to erupt. In addition to finding these anti-Shih flyers posted around the City, #PeterShihFacts turned into a trending topic on Twitter. This gave everyone — from your average Joes to journalists from typically respected mastheads (e.g., S.F. Chronicle, Mother Jones, San Francisco Magazine) — a chance to grab a pitchfork and publicly humiliate Shih for his post.

Items like Shih's are nothing new. Sarah Lacy of the ethically-challenged PandoDaily, published this worrisome tirade back in July, complaining about not being able to get from the Mission to her MidMarket office during the BART strike. Clearly, the City has had enough and are now telling San Francisco's startup culture to, in the wise words of Walter White, tread lightly.

Previously: Startup Bro Backlash Leaps Off The Internet, Into Real Life
Startup Bro Not Completely Stoked On S.F.'s Startup Bro Scene

48-year-old Khalil Jaser was arrested for last summer in Brisbane, California for driving under the influence. Then, like a shunned lover, he proceeded to call his arresting officer a total of 152 times, leaving 54 message laden with death threats over the course of three weeks in September. Along with the barrage of voicemails, the self-proclaimed Palestinian Christian apparently took his rant online, tweeting death threats at the officer in between anti-Semitic slurs, conspiracy theories and requests to get coffee with Mel Gibson.

Jaser's arrest took place the day before that tweet on July 28th of last year when Jaser was booked on suspicion of misdemeanor DUI in Brisbane, a town that is little more than a stretch of Highway 101. Although the Mel Gibson account is a joke, the @khaliljaser account matches the suspect's name and photo. The next day, Jaser started tweeting for the officer to "come clean" about the incident, which he may have felt was a government plot to keep him down:

It appears that the Brisbane P.D. was not paying attention to Jaser's tweets (nor was Mel Gibson, for that matter), so the suspect picked up the phone and began leaving cryptic voicemails at the officer's desk. According to San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, the officer received seven voicemails in a five-day period at the beginning of September, allegedly saying he “better not go to work,” and “Boom, you’re dead motherfucker.” When the officer finally returned the calls to ask what was meant by those comments, Jaser reportedly told the officer he knew what they meant and began his three-week volley of voicemails.

Jaser posted bail on November 29th and was scheduled to begin his jury trial earlier this week on charges of harassment and resisting arrest, but he was apparently too busy setting up a coffee meeting with Mr. Braveheart himself to make it to court.

The Examiner also emailed Jaser (at an address he tweeted soliciting stories from other people "stuck with fake charges by the government"), but the suspect only responded to ask what the inquiry was about. In the time between posting bail and missing his court date, Jaser has did take a moment to address his arresting officer again in December:

That was right before he went back to saying incredibly disgusting things about Jewish people and then brushing off his anti-Semitism:

There's currently a $150,000 warrant out for Jaser's arrest, but he probably already knows that since he's got the government all figured out:

SFist received the following hot tip this morning.

'Gay men and uppers''just the way God wanted it'!!!! Gay men and uppers are two things that God most certainly does not want. Thankfully He is a merciful God, should they repent,He forgives. They will have to face Him one day and give an account of their lives.

This is as good a time as any to remind you that when you partake in lifty substance abuse, please think twice before you send us a tip. This goes double for three-day weekends. Our inbox just can't handle all of the 3:38 a.m. meth-infused rants on Jesus, the state of the gay male, or the "radio transmitters the CIA and FBI put in [your] eyelashes."

Thanks.

A player? In a real estate site? In our ideal world Real estate sites should show us what the place would look like were we to live in there instead of the kind of relaxing music that makes us want to go Lizzie Borden. Even better - sometimes the player doesn't appear, and you have to close your browser window to shut it up. Ugh. We hate this website. And now we hate the condo building.

Why? Follow us after the jump!

[Sorry to go all Noe Valley on you lovely readers, but yes, one more SFist writer is knocked up and ready to rant.]

A Pea in a Pod near Union Square was on the list of dreaded maternity-clothes-shopping destinations when we realized that we could no longer button our jeans. Mistake. Big mistake. APIAP's non-designer jeans (We are not spending $130 on elastic-banded 7 For All Mankinds, thank you very much) come in three sizes; small, medium, and large. Fair enough, right? Wrong. The sizes do not correspond to pant sizes. Oh no, they correspond to the size of the elastic band.

It was really nice of them to set their standard jean size at 4 or 6. We can only guesstimate the actual size based on the way our size-8 ass couldn't quite make it into the denim. After attempting to try on a small, then a medium, and then (holy crap) a large with absolutely no success, we left the store in tears amid a dirty-look assault from a saleswoman who at first was totally sweet. Was it our huge ass that offended her or the huge pile of teeny-tiny jeans we left in the dressing room? We'll never know.

On the bright side, we ventured to Serramonte (we're kinda ashamed to admit) where we discovered Motherhood Maternity and their myriad of affordable denim for ladies of all sizes. A breathe of fresh air after an awful experience.

As we passed by, the dog lunged out and clamped its jaws on our friend's leg. The bite broke no skin, but it scared the hell out of our friend. She told us what happened as we walked on (we hadn't seen the bite), and we were kind of stunned. Then the dog-wielding dude walked up and passed us, munching on a slice of pizza.

Our friend told him to "control your dog, or go back to Marin."

Arguments, the SFPD, and animal welfare after the jump!

But that's the entire point! Anyway, RicardoSF tells us in the comments section here that:

In January's issue of The Advocate in the Rants & Raves section -- unavailable online --

-- Openly gay Vallejo, CA, Mayor Gary Cloutier, when asked at a Vallejo religious forum if he would support an event like San Francisco's Folsom Street Fair, October 20.

Seesh. Not every party can be the White party, butch. (He must be one of those homos who complain about gays always thinking he's straight, just how much he doesn't get the whole Judy Garland thing, and self--promoting like that. Still, we have to agree with him on some level: we don't care that much for the FSF. But that's because of its pungent crowd and blistering sunlight.

But disgusted? Not so much.

And yes, we guess we could have gotten out of our car to pick the garbage back up to dump off, but, well, first of all, iyick, and we were late for a movie anyways so didn't want to waste anymore time. Actually, we were so gobsmacked by the whole thing we were too stunned to do anything.

Also, like a month ago, we were stuck in traffic on the 101 when some guy in a pickup truck rolled down his window and threw out an empty Coke can. Again, what the heck? We started to give the guy the finger for doing something just so wrong but decided against it when we realized that giving the finger to a guy in a pickup truck might not be such a good thing.

Anyways, since we weren't able to do something to both people at the time, we'd like to take the time to say this-- y'all SUCK.

You see, links like this serve one purpose. Even though we know that the internet is primarily for porn and reading SFist, there are evil people out there who want to steal your passwords so they can do evil things with them. There is a term for this. It’s called phishing.

Now, while most of you are saying, “Duh, we already know this!” We must reply, Really? Then explain why multiple emails have shown up in our MySpace mailbox saying the following.

“can't believe a 18 year old chick would put half-nude pics on myspace. whore alert.”

“ut oh, i know she wasn't supposed to put half-naked pics on her myspace page.. her parents are gonna be pissed!”

While these little messages are entertaining (we especially love Whore Alert, obvi), they clog up our inbox and make us think that you’re not as smart as we once thought you were.

Hmm. It also make us wonder if our phished friends know about the bridge closing this weekend.

We had been a proud, satisfied owner of an Apple PowerBook for a little over two years (and a blue-and-white G3 for five years before that) when it all went quickly downhill last November. Our computer started making these frightening, crackling, static, grinding noises, accompanied by nonsensical beeps, and then it crashed hard. We did an "erase and reinstall," which bought us about two weeks. Then, we had to pay our first somewhat quick and painless visit to our local Genius Bar, where it was determined we needed a new hard drive. Little did we know, that initial visit was the first of about five or six such increasingly mind-numbing visits in the coming year.

Every couple of months, the same issues kept sprouting up, although the static noise wasn't as bad after they replaced the old cabling. The first couple of times, we thought we just had ridiculously bad luck and had received a defective hard drive. Twice. Then, the second two times we realized that maybe that stupid cell phone holder with the super strong magnetic clip was the problem. Oops, we thought, the second time around, while sitting at an airport bar in tears over our martini, feeling like a total airhead, after we had placed the aforementioned cell phone holder directly onto our hard drive, which actually vibrated from the force. So, we quickly chucked the cell phone holder into the trash and got yet another new hard drive.

By this point, we had become experts at backing up our information and had reinstalled our software about ten times. We had met pretty much every Genius at the Stockton Street Apple store, and a few at the Indianapolis one, after the airport incident. (Any Geniuses out there who can tell us whether you go around telling people you work as a "Genius" for a living?)

Well, the final crash ocurred last week, just nine days before our three-year extended warranty expired. Very timely, we must say. We had done nothing wrong this time around, and we were not about to step foot into that Genius Bar again. Plus, that Einstein quote kept ringing in our head, "Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Find out what happens after the jump!