Week Ten, Thing 20 : Explore Twitter

I first joined Twitter many months ago (I've forgotten whether it was late 2008 or early 2009.) At first, it looked pointless, but I got an idea of how I might enjoy it, and started an account from which I tweeted only song lyrics. I started following people I knew from elsewhere on the internet, and, if they tweeted something I could reply to appropriately using existing song lyrics, I'd reply that way.

Over time, it got more and more frustrating, wanting to say things I couldn't use lyrics for, so eventually I got a second, "normal" Twitter account. I followed many of the same people I followed on my first account, as well as new people I found while talking to my "followers." I do find that terminology a little weird. I don't mind it as a verb, e.g. "I'm going to follow you on Twitter," but, describing someone as a "follower" of another person on Twitter bothers me a bit. Referring to "my followers" makes me afraid of sounding like a cult leader, or, at the very least, someone who thinks a little too highly of herself.

On the other hand, I've gotten used to the "friend" terminology that is used on many social networking and blogging sites. Some people find this novel use of the word "friend" disconcerting, or indicative of a contemporary inability to distinguish casual contact from emotional intimacy. However, I don't feel the term to be personally harmful. Some of my online friends really do deserve the term, while for others it's mostly a label that indicates only an extremely week tie within a specific social network. I don't think the word is polluted by the usage, as some commentators have suggested. I know that people I've only "talked" with online once or twice, but who have agreed to read my blog, and me to read theirs, do not thereby become "friends" in most meaningful ways.

I do believe that the multiplication of "weak ties" that the New York Times article mentions can be a very positive development. I even enjoy the unidirectional weak ties that the NYT article disparages as 'parasocial' (middle of page five.) I'd guess that about a third of the people I follow are non-mutual (I follow them, but they don't follow me) and also have extremely large followings. That is, they are celebrities, or at least extremely popular people within smaller cultural groups. I follow them not because I expect them to talk to me, or even to acknowledge my specific existence, but because I'm interested in what they are doing and saying. I find the things they say or the things they link to interesting. That's largely the same reason I follow non-celebrity people--because I like what they have to say.

I think a large part of my attraction to Twitter is as simple as that. Anyone, anywhere in the world, if they are on Twitter, and their 140-character messages interest me, becomes a small part of my daily life. If I were prone to delusions, I suppose this might be a bad thing. Indeed, I have witnessed obsessive people harrassing celebrities on Twitter, and, I must admit that I've also been entertained by watching unstable celebrities lash out at perceived insults from fans and other celebrities. As the Times article indicates, Twitter and other similar online phenomena in some ways bring the world back to an earlier time when everyone knew what everyone else was doing. The fact remains, however, that I retain the privilege of keeping some things to myself.