The comedian Dane Cook apparently believes he is building his brand by pumping out a steady stream of comments on Twitter. Cook’s followers receive a regular series of bons mots: “Just got my hair cut. When finished she asked me, ‘Do u want any product in your hair?’ I said sure — how about dairy?”

Cook’s comments are so lame and unfunny that what he’s actually doing is revealing how little talent he has. It’s morbidly fascinating, kind of like the forbidden thrill you get watching professional wrestling. You know it’s awful. You know you shouldn’t enjoy it, yet you can’t look away. That is why I’ve come to believe that, of all the hellish things that have been spawned in the fever swamp of the Internet, Twitter may turn out to be the most successful of them all — not in spite of its stupidity, but because of it.

Twitter has become a playground for imbeciles, skeevy marketers, D-list celebrity half-wits, and pathetic attention seekers: Shaquille O’Neal, Kim Kardashian, Ryan Seacrest. Sure, some serious people, like George Stephanopoulos and Al Gore, use Twitter. But most of what streams across Twitter is junk.

The genius of Twitter is that it manages to be even stupider than TV. It’s so stupid that it’s brilliant.

Yes, a guy on Twitter posted the first photos of that US Airways plane crash on the Hudson River in January. Yes, Twitter let the world follow the protests in Iran. But forget all the stuff you’ve heard from Web gurus about Twitter being useful or important. For most, Twitter is entertainment—a giant TV channel with millions of shows. Almost all of them are garbage.

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