Today, hundreds of protesters are behind bars. It should come as no surprise that harsh treatment and regular beatings are part of the Iranian prison experience. And it’s now reported that the jailed women and young boys are subject to rape and sodomy.

It would be generous to call Twitter a mile wide and an inch deep. Casual usage would measure its depth in atoms, at best. Supporting change in the world is fun, but only as it allows for narcissistic melodrama. It’s hard feel good about yourself when child rape is part of the story. It’s tragic, but not exciting. Celebrity deaths and reality television allow for both.

As for the fearless denizens of Twitter? They’ve moved on to other important news of the day: Lady Gaga. Regis and Kelly. “New Moon.”

Iranians in want of democracy must feel a bit like the Kurds following the Gulf War.

Twitter has proven itself not to be a tool of revolution, or a mechanism of change, but a mirror of the excitability and fickleness of the American zeitgeist. Mousavi was all but forgotten when Michael Jackson fatally overdosed. And on Twitter, Jackson wasn’t just an 80s pop star and plastic surgeon’s paycheck. He became a humanitarian. A great humanitarian. The greatest humanitarian of his day. Again, the Chicago River flowed, only this time it was with the maudlin tears of children who would be denied another Michael Jackson album. And people whose only exposure to “Thriller” was the dance scene in “13 Going on 30″ became aficionados, discussing which b-sides were tragically overlooked.

That’s about right.  The reality is that Facebook, Twitter, and other social media aren’t mini-blogs on politics (or even celebrities) as they are mirrors of our own interests.  They are narcissism taken to a new level (and yes, I am as guilty of this too, as anyone who reads my tweets or Facebook feed knows).  Take a look at the most successful twitter users out there — it’s all about them (or their friends or interesting stories they’ve run across).  Making your icon green (which I did, along with thousands if not millions of others) may make you (me) feel good, but it doesn’t do a damn thing to help the Greens now in jail.

Blogging isn’t any different.  What, for example, has Grady accomplished?  He’s made some folks feel bad that they’ve moved on.  And he’s made himself feel good about criticizing them for it.  And he’s given me and others the chance to continue the cycle by commenting on his commenting on the fickleness of Twitter.

I’m not really sure what the answer is here.  Did twitter (and blogs) help at the height of the protests in Iran?  I think so.  Is there much more that social media could be doing now to help those in prison?  I don’t know.

Back in the bad old days of the Cold War, dissidents produced hundreds of texts that were circulated underground, usually in limited copies secretly made on mimeograph machines.  Known as samizdat (literally “self-published”), the works’ authors frequently were jailed merely for having the temerity to write and make a few copies.  Yet these missives were the groundwork for the revolutions of ‘89, and more than a few have endured long after the regimes they criticized collapsed.

Today, many dissidents instead use social media to convey similar ideas (and not just in Iran).  But the nature of social media means that instead of 10,000 words on the power of the powerless, we get 140 characters on the evils of the Ahmadinejad regime.  Such efforts may convey important information, but they cannot by any stretch of the imagination build the intellectual framework necessary for nonviolent social change.

To put it another way, how in the world can Mousavi’s tweets have even remotely the same impact and power as Martin Luther King’s or Vaclav Havel’s essays?  They can’t.

And if you think I’m wrong, let me note that my previous point is 30 characters too long to be usable on Twitter.