“Getting interviewed by National News!” yelled Mark Sanchez in the crowded Chicago café where we sat on a recent sunny Saturday afternoon. To the uninitiated, this may have seemed rude, perhaps even a touch insane. But not to Sanchez and his fellow ‘twits’, a diehard group dedicated to answering the question: “What are you doing now?”

They answer this query all the time, everywhere, no matter what they’re doing – loudly and to nobody in particular. Upon waking up, they scream about how they feel for the benefit of their neighborhood. When they break bread, they yell about their food and often hold it up for others to see. They have coined a moniker for their newfangled habit and it is ‘to twit’. And it is clear that they will twit about anything, from rightfully juicy hearsay to the consistency of daily bowel movements.

The phenomenon is catching on. One can barely walk down the street in one of the big cities of New York or Chicago without hearing a twit raving and ranting. Famed New York socialite Adele Stevens is a noted twit. Her large following hangs on to her every twit as she strolls down Madison Avenue. A recent sampling includes this gem: “Just found out Susan Pritchett plans to wear an identical white gown to the Debutante Ball – going to kill that bitch.”

“Knowing that others understand what I am going through and find my life interesting is really important to me,” says Sanchez to me. He started twitting two months ago and has found it to be a tremendous ego-booster. As Harvard social psychologist Eric Bowdoin said when describing the twit epidemic, “It really boils down to social masturbation, plain and simple – these goddamn twits sometimes even yell about it literally.”

At the end of our meal, Sanchez suddenly seems deeply absorbed in his own thoughts. After a long pause, he screams out to our fellow diners: “Just finished a great free meal with my dreadfully ugly interviewer. At least I got a free piece of steak and I am going to be in the paper!” He looks at me and says, “Phew, I really had to work hard to keep that twit under 140 characters.”