I’ve started tweeting. I had been avoiding this in the
certain knowledge that such a boundless realm of gossip and trivia would fast become
yet another displacement activity and I can ill afford the ones I already have,
even since going into Daily Mail Sidebar-of-Shame cold turkey. But I’ve now succumbed,
for the intellectually vacuous reason that everyone else is doing it and so,
despite being pointless, it has become an expected norm. A bit like organic
food. Question is: why?
So far
I’ve identified five distinct types of ‘user’ as Twitter calls us (with no
prizes for inventiveness). First are those who hold un-private private conversations
which are incomprehensible to the Twitterspheric passer-by. Eavesdropping on
these is like putting your ear to the wall of the Whispering Gallery – all disembodied
voices and elusive content – and it’s only by tracking, bloodhound-like, endless threads and hashtags that
you are able to unearth the – invariably disappointing – meaning of it all.
This
makes me vaguely uncomfortable; it’s how I used to feel on trains when fellow-travellers
wittered into their cell-phones, until the Bolshevik in me decided that any
conversation rammed down the ears of the proximate public was a public
conversation and therefore I had a citizen’s duty to pay attention. That was
before it dawned on me that the nauseating idiots thus ruining the discreet
quiet of the British railway carriage actually want everyone to listen. (The clue here is that they never say, ‘Terrible
day: I wrote off my Austin Metro and my girlfriend/boyfriend dumped me for
George Galloway/Hazel Blears.’) So now I make sure I don’t listen as ostentatiously
as possible. Holding my own competing conversation sends a clear message to
this effect and I award myself extra points if my opponent stops their own chunder
of incontinent boasting to listen, which they usually do when I look furtive
and murmur, ‘they’ve found the bodies’. Try it – you’ll be amazed how quiet a
railway carriage can get. By the time you arrive at your destination someone
will have texted 999 and you’ll be marched off the platform in handcuffs, but
that’s the cost of direct action and a small price to pay for defending the
rights of the individual (as well as being excellent copy for your next blog).
Back to tweeting. The second
type to identify and avoid is the Professional Twit, whose every contribution
is composed with the sole aim of furthering a ‘career’: @martinamis OMG your latest book such incredible #vintageamis and so
reminds me of my great new short story #trulymadlycreeply. Since the tower
of Twitter is built on foundations of self-promotion this is at least an honest
approach, but foundations are hidden for good reason: they are ugly.
Then there are those who bombard
you with stuff – I’m sorry to say I unfollowed the Guardian after only two days
because I was getting more tweets than the Birdman of Alcatraz.
The fourth kind are the
Terrorist Twits. I haven’t identified anyone in particular yet but they must be
out there: what better place to conceal an obscure message full of private
references than among 400 million others?
Finally
there are the celebrity lovers – the most cynical Twits of all – who exploit
the prurience of the rest of us by indulging in Public Displays of Affection.
So distasteful – like teenagers snoggging at the local pool, all damp and
goosepimply. Except celebs do it with less sincerity, more smugness and one eye
on a very different bottom line.
I have
of course spent many happy hours browsing potentially juicy accounts with my
finger poised over the ‘follow’ button. Boris Johnson tweets with his mayoral
loo chain around his neck, which is a sad waste. I suspect he has a second,
incognito stream in which he says all sorts of naughty things about David
Cameron and Michael Gove and whose identity he divulges only to Spectator
readers and members of the Bullingdon Club. My favourite so far is James May who
tweets Haiku poems about his motorbike. James May is also a generous
re-tweeter. I haven’t been re-tweeted yet, but then I’ve only ever sent one
tweet. I’m going for quality, not quantity, a tactic I think the Guardian could
usefully adopt. Watch this cyberspace.