Ev and Biz as Cheech and Chong :-)

utter bullshit, the fact you trust valleywag for info means you dont know what the fuck you are talking about! you really wanna know whats going on with twitter then look at traffic & resources & not a wannabe blog like vallywag!!!!!!

Actually Sam, I checked the Twitter post out myself and linked to it after I confirmed Alex was INDEED a Twitter employee. I also cross referenced the phrase as well to check its meaning. Valleywag found it, but IT IS BASED ON A TWEET FROM A TWITTER EMPLOYEE. I did my homework, and the links are in the post, they didn't make this up. Besides, Owen isn't that good :-)

duncan ok, seeing what i see & what i know about twitter i cant believe that. there are some good people there & i think this tweet was taken out of context

Sam, I'm no puritan and indeed my jokes can raise eyebrows as well, but such an insiders drug reference (and yes, I had to look it up because I hadn't heard it before).... well, it doesn't look good. Even the context doesn't seem funny, I mean you can joke about people being stoned when they're clueless for example, but this..well, it should raise eyebrows at least

you didn't know what smoking a bowl meant? holy hell duncan you disappoint me sometimes.

Tyler, sorry, drugs were never my thing..or that it's not a term used in Australia, at least when I was 19.

Duncan: you need to live in California. That's a very common term here to refer to someone doing something dopey.

@sam: so, "good people" don't smoke pot? @duncan: yeah, we know pot makes people clueless. dear lord, I thought Reefer Madness was behind us.

Pretty common in the midwest, too. Mostly referring to people smoking actual bowls of pot, not doing dopey things. Not that I'd know.

Scoble: are you HIGH? "Are you HIGH?" is a common phrase to refer to someone doing something dopey. But "smoking a bowl"? C'mon. And either way Duncan's right -- the appearances of this are very bad and Twitter probably needs some in-house policy for employee tweeting that could potentially make them look bad.

Robert: yes, "smoking a bowl" is same thing in California as saying "are you high?" Other ways to say it: "you're on crack." Or "hitting the bong again?" or, how I usually say I've done something stupid: "I've had too much Merlot."

But if he said "drinking a beer", would the reaction be the same? It's funny, I still expect hysteria about this stuff among the population at large, but the last place I'd expect to encounter it would be among techies, who owe the entire infotech revolution (the internet, the PC, and much more.) to illicit drugs.

@anthony actually most people I've ever met who were stoned usually didn't make an awful lot of sense :-) Either way: should employees of a funded company (and lots of $$$ as well) be sitting around taking drugs while their core business is falling to pieces? would you really argue that pot helps them sort the downtime issues out? An adjunct: I'm just finishing the book Berlin, Twitter is starting to remind me of the last days of the Reich.

Duncan: stop hitting the crack pipe and get back to work bringing us tech news, OK?

+1 Robert Seidman it's not just me :-) Are you high/ stoned are common jokes. Ultimately its about appearances, this is a company that should be in crisis mode trying to sort their problems out, and instead they would appear to be living the high life instead :-)

@Duncan - you've probably met a lot of people who were high and you didn't know it. I am not saying they should "sit around and take drugs" but am pointing out our irrational hysteria about such things. We turn it all into a cartoon. We confuse use with abuse. And, yes, depending on the individual, it might very well help them sort out downtime issues.

Smoking a bowl is not really DRUGS drugs. Havin a beer is about the same level. It all depends on your tolerance.

geeze so people talking about The Kentucky Derby means they are running in it? sheesh some people are a leeeelte to quick to leap on the soapbox/bandwagon

Duncan: I didn't get out of this that the current Twitter team is actually doing drugs, just throwing around drug references at work. I'd be making such references too if I were going through their code base. "Who was hitting the bong when they wrote this code?" I think you're reading way too much into this and just trying to get more hits on your site. Like I said, stop hitting the crack pipe and get back to work.

@Mo - my point exactly. If someone says "have a beer" we don't leap to the conclusion that the person is a hopeless, raging alcoholic. But "smoke a bowl" and they're stoners, slackers, sitting around watching bad movies and eating cookie dough. It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.

Anthony C: Agree 100%. People smoke pot and nobody knows about it. Many developers smoke pot. It helps with algorithmic thinking; iteration, recursion, branching.

Scoble, cite multiple occasions you've used drug references like this? There was no :-) after it either suggesting it may have been a joke. Do you think a startup like this should be making jokes about drugs in this way when they can't even competently keep their product up for any serious length of time?

I've used drug references all the time. I told a class of journalists at San Jose State University that they were all smoking crack. Again, I think you are reading WAY too much into this. Damn, we aren't even allowed to have fun anymore, especially when we are under stress? Screw that. And this isn't about using drugs, it's about having to be "clean" when speaking in public. This stuff makes me sad, cause in your world all we'd hear is PR-cleansed speech.

In the real world people use drug references all the time. Please stop hitting the crack pipe and get back to work. Here's a few times I've used "Crack" before: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=scoble+crack&btnG=Google+Search

Robert, I live in San Francisco and have for 10 years. "Smoking a bowl" is not the same thing as saying "Are You High" or even "stop hitting the crack pipe" in my experience. That doesn't mean Scoble's wrong and they weren't just throwing out drug references to alleviate stress. Either way, the tweet was a bad idea for the guy: no upside, potential downside.

Here's where my name is used along with "smoking dope." http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=scoble+smoking+dope&btnG=Search

BS Scoble. The context is wrong, it's not clearly a joke, and it uses a term that isn't widely used in the general community (despite what some suggest above...who you know right :-) ). Besides, if you actually read the post you'll know I'm having some fun with it anyway.

Robert: I think everyone on this thread has smoked a bowl tonight. See ya later.

I can totally imagine some of the people at Twitter smoking weed sometimes, and there's nothing wrong with that. And I agree with Mo and Anthony. Personally I tend to think of marijuana as an amplifier, just amplifying the nature of a person to a bigger degree, amplifying how they already are. Slackers smoking weed will feel even more like slacking, neat freaks who are high will feel like doing some clean up, etc, etc. In my opinion based on things I've noticed. I might be wrong though.

@robert, does everyone include you?

Tyler: metaphorically, yes, which explains why I haven't Hidden this comment cluster yet. Sigh.

i go where the conversation is, regardless of how retarded it is. thats why i don't hide ;) i might miss some good noise

That was my biggest laugh of the morning! "Twitter's down cuz he's to stoned to be up and high" :D You gotta appreciate the humor LOL. Update: I've actually read all your comments, and I must agree with the scobleizer, you oughta quit the crack. Fingerpointing is a pretty lame thing (except when aiming at politicians ;) ).

OK, seriously - I have no problem with someone smoking pot. Or drinking a beer. Or popping mushrooms. Or smoking peyote. Or dropping acid. There I said it. I DO have a problem with people doing it while they're working. This isn't underwater basketweaving. It's software architecture and engineering. You don't drive better drunk, and you certainly don't make a better status microblogging utility stoned.

You all should smoke a bowl and relax!! Anthony C. hit it on the head, all folks that smoke pot are not slackers, loser, lazy or drug addicts! Should he have posted it, NO! So write his boss an email, don't spread bad news and be a gossip freak! Are you an investor of the company? If so, then you really shouldn't be talking!! It seems Duncan is trying to get hits on his URL to me and that's not gossip, that perception!

"The entire personal computer revolution came out of the San Francisco Bay area and was pioneered by pot smoking members of the counterculture," said Steven Hager, editor-in-chief of High Times. "Because these people tend to be highly creative and because Macs are the choice of most art and video professionals, I guess that's your story." A couple of veteran journalists who covered the creation of the Macintosh in the mid-1980s claim pot had a profound influence on the design of the machine. That's a claim denied by others, including Jef Raskin, the head of the Mac's design team. "The Mac building was a very loose outfit," said one journalist, who asked to remain anonymous. "The building was permeated with a certain odor." Another journalist -- the former editor of a famous Macintosh magazine -- said the Mac's engineers and programmers were always smoking weed. "There were people out the back in the parking lot smoking pot all the time," said the editor, who also asked to remain anonymous."

@Vincent: it's pretty well-known that the tech revolution was steeped in psychedelics and pot. Read Markoff's book, Dormouse. @Mark: I think it depends on the person as to whether psychoactives can help one be more focused and/or creative. I know a lot of very smart, very talented people who have decided that they do.

Scoble, lets face it, the only reason you're defending Twitter is because they gave you an interview. The change in tone on your blog overnight was obvious. If I was joking, I could say they blew you....but that would be as inappropriate as a drug reference :-)

@Vincent: manage a team of stoners that get high at work vs. those that know how to separate their recreation from the production with side-by-sides on productivity and accuracy and get back to me. I have, I know from what I speak. There may have been pot-smoking at Mac. Who knows. Not I, I wasn't there. I do know that if I have someone on my team stoned on the job, they won't be on the job any longer.

@Vincent: And Jobs has said that doing LSD was one of the "two or three most important things" he has done in his life.

@Anthony: Would Jobs take LSD before delivering a keynote? I rather doubt it. It may be important, but improving productivity and performance it doesn't. Separate work and play. All I'm saying. Psychoactives very easily can be linked to increased creativity, but software engineering and development also requires a level of analytics and practicality that can easily go out the window while under the influence.

One question - how many tech companies have mandatory drug testing?

@Mark - I agree, except that I wouldn't qualify psychoactive use as necessarily play - but again, like all of this it depends on the user. I definitely hear what you're saying. But back to the topic, pot specifically: I think whether marijuana is a productivity killer or enhancer depends on the user. I've seen it turn some people into morons for a couple of hours, and I know many others who find it indispensable for certain types of work. I guess I'm just saying it's not as clear cut as some imply.

@Mark: what about people who take Adderall or Ritalin at work? You OK with that? And whether or not there was a lot of pot being smoked at Apple is not credibly questionable.

Oh, I agree Mark. For the record, I'm definitely not promoting the use of marijuana or any other substances at work, far from it. Just saying that it wouldn't surprise me if Evan, Biz and others sometimes smoke and discuss stuff, Twitter issues, take the pressure off, etc. They have a lot of weight on their shoulders and it's their company, so good for them if they have the opportunity to be free to do stuff like that. But maybe that's not even the case... So anyway.

Funny stuff from a Wired article: "At PC Expo, people smell like booze. At Macworld, people smell like marijuana." The editor said there's even a special pot smoking area around the back of San Francisco's Moscone Center, the long-time venue of Macworld Expo, known as "the office." "Ten or 20 people are there all day long," the editor said. "CEOs, programmers, authors. People say, I'm just going to the 'the office' for a couple of minutes."

One final thing before I get some sleep: I didn't mean to (help) turn this into a debate about illicit drugs, but our cultural hysteria about them always hits a nerve with me. :) And I agree with Vincent's latest.

@anthony: based upon my... ahem ... knowlege of mary jane, I'd have to say that for *certain* types of work, it can be a requirement. I've known several folks, mostly in tech support or hardware repair, that require it to get through the day. those are situations with endlessly repetitive tasks involved, not analytics or creativity. Adderal or Ritalin are different cases altogether, and a pretty complex topic in and of themselves...

.... Those aren't typical recreational substances, and have 'legitimate' medicinal purposes. That said, they're also over prescribed, and can have definite negative side-effects to long-term productivity in the workplace, but to a much leser degree than pot, IMO.

@Vincent: In that particular use case, I can see how smoking a bowl might definitely improve things at Twitter. I may stand corrected.

Well this could explain some of the Photo Booth effects.

And before this thread turns around and bites me on my own ass, I haven't had time for recreational drug usage since the late 90's. Been too busy working.

This thread cracks me up. I'm convinced Twitter can take 3 weeks off and do absolutely nothing and people will still use the service.