Why I Am Still On Twitter
A few days ago I –for some reason or other- read through my past tweets, for me a sort of diary, interesting and sometimes helpful in remembering when or where certain things occurred. But to be honest, as fascinating as it is for me – why should anybody else be interested in my coffee drinking habits or holiday antics? The only people who took the least bit of notice are those who want to get me as a customer for their goods – coffee or holiday apartments in aforementioned cases. Come to think of it, that seems to be the main reason for a twitter account – to sell your wares or plug your causes. Even tweeps I thought of as interesting people to start with have now become just businesses. Everybody on twitter has to sell or plug something and most of the ones I follow have become predictable and, at least for me, boring. I did not join twitter to buy things or consider somebody’s causes, all I wanted was I picture of humanity, chatting and telling me about their lives.
After considering all this I decided rather thoughtlessly to stop tweeting except if I had something really clever or important to say.
But then I kept mulling the whole thing over and over: twitter has been just that, a forum to tell the world what you were doing and maybe why and also to occasionally recommend a film or some music or some fun and interesting websites. That’s why I joined and that’s what I want from twitter. And considering that nobody is unique I guess there must be a few more like me out there who don’t want to buy stuff or hear about your pet project – those things can be found all over the net if you need it. And hearing about it on twitter is just like these mounts of paper the postman drops into your letter box -to be instantly discarded onto the recycling pile.
It is sad that absolutely everything has to become commercial and that everybody seems to be ok with that, maybe even expect it. So I thought in the end that I really should stay and chat about my inconsequential little happenings, thoughts and deeds just to provide a small weight on the other side, to help balancing the social media. To try and provide a bit of the spirit that has made social media, that has helped invent social media in the first place – inane chatter and sharing of eating habits. As silly as that sounds, it is the core of humanity, the communication of everyday occurrences, of your life to other people. And when we are all 95 it might be the only means of communication left to us in our wheel chairs. So I will not give up but bore you to an early grave with the things that happened to me on the way to the…whatever. And hopefully I will weed out all the sales persons and be left with people who have a life, interesting, silly and human.
