| Written by Rich | Permalink |
| Published at 00:22:34 on 26 January 2009 | Add comment |
I'm pretty sure there's more to being a journalist than having a Twitter account (like curiosity, a good memory, a thick skin, strong liver etc) but if it's not a sufficient condition it's certainly a necessary one, judging by the almighty Twitter wank-fest that's been going on in tech and online journalism circles for the last several months.
According to the new orthodoxy, if you're not a Twitterer you may as well be locked in a sensory deprivation chamber, so cut off are you from the world. You certainly don't deserve to call yourself a journalist.
This is, of course, bollocks of the highest order. But I've finally given in and signed up, if only so I can deride it from a position of authority. The straw that broke the camel's back was Stephen Fry talking about it on Jonathon Ross the other night. I mean, if General Melchett is doing it I must be way behind the curve, right?
The same thing happened with Facebook a few years ago. I couldn't for the life of me understand why people would want to join the wretched thing, but there came a point where I didn't really have a choice. So now I have a Facebook page, and I log in every two or three months to delete all the invitations to install a magic 8 ball on my profile or join a knitting club or talk to someone I haven't seen for 15 years, or whatever the fuck else people do on there.
Yes, I'm a bit of a misanthrope when it comes to casual online acquaintances. But I know I'm not alone.
Twitter is like Facebook on crack. You know the people who update their Facebook status 40 times a day? That's basically all it is. It is, in fairness, a rather excellent concept, and like its devotees claim has the capacity to revolutionise the way information is transmitted. In theory it's rather beautiful - reliable sources of information gain followers, information gets shared rapidly with the people to whom it is of interest, and rumours are overtaken by facts, like some giant self-repairing neural network in which we're all nodes.
But it freaks me out. I opened my account this afternoon, and within a quarter of an hour had my first follower, Bridget. Thinking this rather odd, I said so (with Twitter, of course). Soon enough, she stopped following me.
Have I offended the poor woman? Are there some rules of Twitter etiquette that I've broken? The truth, of course, is that I don't particularly care. But I do find it rather interesting.
Since then I've acquired three more followers. One, Guardian Tech, is one that I'm following. I'm following it because it's a news source. But why is it following me? Is it doing so because that's what you're supposed to do in Twitterland?
Because if so, perhaps I should start following Mihai from Bucharest and Scott, who presumably saw me on the list of Journalism.co.uk followers. But why would I want to track the lives of people I don't know (especially since Mihai doesn't appear to speak English)? Scott is a journalist and a fan of Firefly and Tolkien, according to his bio - in other words, we'd probably get on quite well. But the whole notion of choosing to observe strangers' lives from a distance (none of Bridget, Mihai, Scott or GT have said hello - it's strictly a one-way thing) is one that strikes me as fundamentally weird.
Twittering is not the same as blogging. I'm quite happy to type away into the void here - it's my space, and I don't particularly care if no-one reads these pages. The whole 'following' thing is what makes Twitter so different. Next time I update my status on Twitter, three people will read it - Mihai, Scott, and whoever controls the GT account. Will that change what I choose to write, knowing that I'm addressing three specific people? I imagine it will.
