Following on from my last blog on the beast that is social media, which was primarily focused on the subject of Facebook profiles, we now move on to a more "celebrity"-driven medium: Twitter.
Twitter is a great example of societal extremes. Twitter was ostensibly a service for famous people, and for the public who follow them. Someone famous has millions of followers who people want to keep up with, so they get to see every public message of 140 characters that the famous person farts out, including their fave brands and coffee shops and whatever, and the sheep can appear to be cool by either claiming that they love Starbucks too or following/promoting that brand to their friends. "She's so cool, she drinks the same bean as Jay-Z!" Uh-huh.
But Twits is entirely public in most cases, and has got nothing at all to do with privacy. Additionally, at least initially, Twitter was better suited to the typical rock star or supermodel on the go, as it was more eminently mobile, not least given that it was the equivalent of phone texting as mobile update. So your favorite celebrity who was always in this country or that one could fire off 140 characters to tell the world how cool they were (in 95% of cases), and you, the public, could drool but be in with the in crowd.
The actual mechanics of Twitter are best suited to the celebrity as well. If I am famous, and I follow only 10 other celebrity friends, but I have 3.9M followers, it's perfect. My Twitter feed contains comments only from my friends, but what I type goes out to millions onto their feeds. In other words, I have things of considerable significance to say to my followers but unless I follow people back then I don't have to wade through pages of posts to find one from my real friends. In other words, on Twitter it is much more fun to be followed by 5M, than it is to follow even 1,000.
This theoretically should limit how many individuals a person may follow, because the posts pile up. If you do a quick scan you will see that many people follow up to 1,000 (or more) "friends' on Twitter. If each of those people posts even twice per day, and you take a few days off, then your own Twitter feed could have as many as 6,000 posts of 140 characters waiting for you. It's totally ridiculous, unless of course, it's got nothing to do with reading, whatsoever!
Once again, the inevitable happened. "Well, I wanna be a star too! I know I can't be like Gaga or the Biebs, but if they can have fans in the tens of millions, maybe I should have a few thousand, even if like them, I have little to say of any real significance to people, but what does that matter? It's about me following a few thousand, and most of them hopefully following me back, and then I am my very own mini-star with my own mini-audience to boot! Ahem.
The clearest example of this phenomenon is what I call the "equivalence syndrome". "Wow, I now have 1,000 followers on my Twitter account, woo-hoo!" But a closer look usually reveals, "Yeah, but you are following 1083 at the same time, lol!" "Shut up, you are jealous!"
So, those who are judged to truly have nothing of any great significance to say in 140 characters, as opposed to those who are totally fascinating (due to being rich and famous), are forced to compromise. "If I follow you, you must follow me back! Or else!". The threat quite clearly being, of course, that if you don't follow me back, I will unfollow you again inside 48 hours. It is amazingly childish and simultaneously sad and almost pathetic in grown adults.
We at EU see it all the time, and in fact I now use it as an acid test for a quality follower or someone just "churning", as it is known. Out of the blue, due to something you wrote on your blog, or Facebook page, or website, several (or many) new followers appear on your Twitter account. Usually, most do have something in common with your own interests or business, while others may be totally off the wall. In either case, all you have to do is wait 24-48 hours, and guess what? If you have not followed them back, they are usually gone. "I followed you, therefore you should follow me back!" is writ large all over their account, and given that they don't seem to want your content, after all, but just a co-follow, then it's goodbye and good riddance as far as I am concerned!
What is the supposed fascination with building up even a few thousand "followers" in such a fashion, and the only real currency achieved is their "follow"; you are not interested in their content and neither are they in yours! But you end up with a respectable 1,900 followers, albeit alongside your 2,100 follows. To any vaguely sharp eye, it screams "content (if it can even be called that on occasion) of very little real interest to anyone." But the person gets to feel like a (very) minor celebrity due to the number of their disinterested "following". Even if it is a facade, a charade, if not an outright fake.
The downside to all of this is that people then sort of lie to themselves that they are being watched, so they begin tweeting like a rock star, name-dropping and location-dropping and "here's-what-I-had-for-breakfast-at-Holt Renfrew's-cafe-this-morning" type of posts. It is cringe-inducing enough already, but when you look to see how their friends respond, or what any of their 2,000 "fans" say in return, you invariably see black space. So they truly are talking to themselves, 99% of the time. I refer to this as #Twanking, which I am not going to elaborate further on, other than to say that it derives from a British term for, ahem, "pleasuring oneself"!
One of the more recent developments (but not progress!) of this phenomenon is that Twitter is today chock-a-block full of millions of users telling the world that they just checked into this restaurant or that bar, as if anyone remotely cares. You only have to look and see how many replies it gets to see that no one bothers to even read it. This checking-in is such nonsense and trying to become the Mayor of this bistro and displace another is one of the most ridiculous things that I have ever seen (for anyone over 30), and is the surest sign of a real celebrity wannabe, getting it wrong. Any real celebrity rarely if ever announces that they just walked into the steakhouse on the corner of Gillingham and Elm, unless they want to be mobbed when there, and trust me, most don't.
The celebrity wannabe should think about that for a second. As much as Twitter is public, and celebrity life is very much in the public eye, how come those attention-loving real celebrities are not the ones "checking-in" to cool, fancy bars/eateries on Twitter, yet the celebrity wannabes do? It's totally ironic, in that anyone whose location is of interest to the twitterverse generally hides it, while the total nobody celebrity wannabe insists on posting their precise GPS-determined location to everyone but nobody at the same time? So they must want to be found, right?!
However, in one hilarious example that I saw, among quite a few, one of these "types" actually aggressively admonished a guy as a stalker because he suggested he would show up at the bar beside her, to offer her a drink. She got herself all irradiated, because he had read her public announcement of checking-in and sitting at the corner of the bar in some location, and he wanted to join in. Why would you announce precisely which bar you are sitting in, alone, on a public site, other than to have people see it, read it, and act on it by coming on down?!
"Ah, okay, I didn't think of that, I see, you wanna act and live like a minor celebrity, but you don't want people, friends or followers, like me, to actually read your check-in status and show up at a public place that you announced to us that you were present at? Well, maybe you should get over yourself and realize the stupidity of your behavior and drop the twanking then?! There's a price to pay for being a cool person, out in the public eye; go ask any real celebrity!"
Although this behavior is most definitely indicative of a Twitter nobody/celebrity wannabe, even the true stars have been known to indulge in such careless antics on occasion. In a very recent example, we read about an individual with a massive following of some 25M, who similarly announced to the world (and in this case, she does have an audience!) that she was leaving St. Pancras station in London, headed to Paris.
What a shock (not) that she got mobbed upon arrival in gay Paris, and then proceeded to get nasty about it in reaction, via some expletive-filled (and some say racist) posts on Twitter. Silly little girl, and one who should know better. Unless of course, it was all about that craving and need for evermore attention, and simply represents a person who knows exactly how to use various media to create a stir! But it was her mistake, and her reaction to it did not exactly associate her with very much class, at all. Anyone who even crossed the street to see her, even if they follow her on Twitter, quite clearly wasted their time.
I was going to leave it at that, until by way of footnote, I just stumbled upon perhaps the single most ridiculously hilarious example of the nobody/celebrity wannabe type discussed above. I thought that I must be dreaming until I looked further into it, and realized that others were also doing it. Yep, the same type that announces their every entry into a cool restaurant or cafe or bar, whilst embarrassing themselves enough already, are also prone to creating a second Twitter account, for, no, it's not a joke.....their dog.
A f***ing dog, with a Twitter account?! Are y'all kidding me?! A dog who follows other pets on Twitter, and who is followed back by other dogs and pets?! A dog who posts comments about doggy life on Twitter?! I thought I had I seen it all, but no. I think that pets should be banned from Twitter, period. It is so puerile and infantile to be beyond discussion, and it is the kind of thing one only associates with the too rich/too famous celebrity, who have got just too much time and money on their hands. The kind of people who have such "a great life" that they need to get a life, if you catch my drift!
I am beginning to believe that Twitter should be banned for those (who are neither a celebrity nor a business person) over 30, as a way of preventing them from totally embarrassing themselves when grown. All of this checking-in at cool places, wanting to become the Mayor of Joe's Greasy Spoon that seats twenty, Instagramming oneself in the hairdresser's chair, and creating a Twitter account for a canine, is the surest sign of delusions of grandeur, smartphone addiction, and the need to go back and buy a real life in one of those fancy hotels or stores! Kevin Mc
Twitter is a great example of societal extremes. Twitter was ostensibly a service for famous people, and for the public who follow them. Someone famous has millions of followers who people want to keep up with, so they get to see every public message of 140 characters that the famous person farts out, including their fave brands and coffee shops and whatever, and the sheep can appear to be cool by either claiming that they love Starbucks too or following/promoting that brand to their friends. "She's so cool, she drinks the same bean as Jay-Z!" Uh-huh.
But Twits is entirely public in most cases, and has got nothing at all to do with privacy. Additionally, at least initially, Twitter was better suited to the typical rock star or supermodel on the go, as it was more eminently mobile, not least given that it was the equivalent of phone texting as mobile update. So your favorite celebrity who was always in this country or that one could fire off 140 characters to tell the world how cool they were (in 95% of cases), and you, the public, could drool but be in with the in crowd.
The actual mechanics of Twitter are best suited to the celebrity as well. If I am famous, and I follow only 10 other celebrity friends, but I have 3.9M followers, it's perfect. My Twitter feed contains comments only from my friends, but what I type goes out to millions onto their feeds. In other words, I have things of considerable significance to say to my followers but unless I follow people back then I don't have to wade through pages of posts to find one from my real friends. In other words, on Twitter it is much more fun to be followed by 5M, than it is to follow even 1,000.
This theoretically should limit how many individuals a person may follow, because the posts pile up. If you do a quick scan you will see that many people follow up to 1,000 (or more) "friends' on Twitter. If each of those people posts even twice per day, and you take a few days off, then your own Twitter feed could have as many as 6,000 posts of 140 characters waiting for you. It's totally ridiculous, unless of course, it's got nothing to do with reading, whatsoever!
Once again, the inevitable happened. "Well, I wanna be a star too! I know I can't be like Gaga or the Biebs, but if they can have fans in the tens of millions, maybe I should have a few thousand, even if like them, I have little to say of any real significance to people, but what does that matter? It's about me following a few thousand, and most of them hopefully following me back, and then I am my very own mini-star with my own mini-audience to boot! Ahem.
The clearest example of this phenomenon is what I call the "equivalence syndrome". "Wow, I now have 1,000 followers on my Twitter account, woo-hoo!" But a closer look usually reveals, "Yeah, but you are following 1083 at the same time, lol!" "Shut up, you are jealous!"
So, those who are judged to truly have nothing of any great significance to say in 140 characters, as opposed to those who are totally fascinating (due to being rich and famous), are forced to compromise. "If I follow you, you must follow me back! Or else!". The threat quite clearly being, of course, that if you don't follow me back, I will unfollow you again inside 48 hours. It is amazingly childish and simultaneously sad and almost pathetic in grown adults.
We at EU see it all the time, and in fact I now use it as an acid test for a quality follower or someone just "churning", as it is known. Out of the blue, due to something you wrote on your blog, or Facebook page, or website, several (or many) new followers appear on your Twitter account. Usually, most do have something in common with your own interests or business, while others may be totally off the wall. In either case, all you have to do is wait 24-48 hours, and guess what? If you have not followed them back, they are usually gone. "I followed you, therefore you should follow me back!" is writ large all over their account, and given that they don't seem to want your content, after all, but just a co-follow, then it's goodbye and good riddance as far as I am concerned!
What is the supposed fascination with building up even a few thousand "followers" in such a fashion, and the only real currency achieved is their "follow"; you are not interested in their content and neither are they in yours! But you end up with a respectable 1,900 followers, albeit alongside your 2,100 follows. To any vaguely sharp eye, it screams "content (if it can even be called that on occasion) of very little real interest to anyone." But the person gets to feel like a (very) minor celebrity due to the number of their disinterested "following". Even if it is a facade, a charade, if not an outright fake.
The downside to all of this is that people then sort of lie to themselves that they are being watched, so they begin tweeting like a rock star, name-dropping and location-dropping and "here's-what-I-had-for-breakfast-at-Holt Renfrew's-cafe-this-morning" type of posts. It is cringe-inducing enough already, but when you look to see how their friends respond, or what any of their 2,000 "fans" say in return, you invariably see black space. So they truly are talking to themselves, 99% of the time. I refer to this as #Twanking, which I am not going to elaborate further on, other than to say that it derives from a British term for, ahem, "pleasuring oneself"!
One of the more recent developments (but not progress!) of this phenomenon is that Twitter is today chock-a-block full of millions of users telling the world that they just checked into this restaurant or that bar, as if anyone remotely cares. You only have to look and see how many replies it gets to see that no one bothers to even read it. This checking-in is such nonsense and trying to become the Mayor of this bistro and displace another is one of the most ridiculous things that I have ever seen (for anyone over 30), and is the surest sign of a real celebrity wannabe, getting it wrong. Any real celebrity rarely if ever announces that they just walked into the steakhouse on the corner of Gillingham and Elm, unless they want to be mobbed when there, and trust me, most don't.
The celebrity wannabe should think about that for a second. As much as Twitter is public, and celebrity life is very much in the public eye, how come those attention-loving real celebrities are not the ones "checking-in" to cool, fancy bars/eateries on Twitter, yet the celebrity wannabes do? It's totally ironic, in that anyone whose location is of interest to the twitterverse generally hides it, while the total nobody celebrity wannabe insists on posting their precise GPS-determined location to everyone but nobody at the same time? So they must want to be found, right?!
However, in one hilarious example that I saw, among quite a few, one of these "types" actually aggressively admonished a guy as a stalker because he suggested he would show up at the bar beside her, to offer her a drink. She got herself all irradiated, because he had read her public announcement of checking-in and sitting at the corner of the bar in some location, and he wanted to join in. Why would you announce precisely which bar you are sitting in, alone, on a public site, other than to have people see it, read it, and act on it by coming on down?!
"Ah, okay, I didn't think of that, I see, you wanna act and live like a minor celebrity, but you don't want people, friends or followers, like me, to actually read your check-in status and show up at a public place that you announced to us that you were present at? Well, maybe you should get over yourself and realize the stupidity of your behavior and drop the twanking then?! There's a price to pay for being a cool person, out in the public eye; go ask any real celebrity!"
Although this behavior is most definitely indicative of a Twitter nobody/celebrity wannabe, even the true stars have been known to indulge in such careless antics on occasion. In a very recent example, we read about an individual with a massive following of some 25M, who similarly announced to the world (and in this case, she does have an audience!) that she was leaving St. Pancras station in London, headed to Paris.
What a shock (not) that she got mobbed upon arrival in gay Paris, and then proceeded to get nasty about it in reaction, via some expletive-filled (and some say racist) posts on Twitter. Silly little girl, and one who should know better. Unless of course, it was all about that craving and need for evermore attention, and simply represents a person who knows exactly how to use various media to create a stir! But it was her mistake, and her reaction to it did not exactly associate her with very much class, at all. Anyone who even crossed the street to see her, even if they follow her on Twitter, quite clearly wasted their time.
I was going to leave it at that, until by way of footnote, I just stumbled upon perhaps the single most ridiculously hilarious example of the nobody/celebrity wannabe type discussed above. I thought that I must be dreaming until I looked further into it, and realized that others were also doing it. Yep, the same type that announces their every entry into a cool restaurant or cafe or bar, whilst embarrassing themselves enough already, are also prone to creating a second Twitter account, for, no, it's not a joke.....their dog.
A f***ing dog, with a Twitter account?! Are y'all kidding me?! A dog who follows other pets on Twitter, and who is followed back by other dogs and pets?! A dog who posts comments about doggy life on Twitter?! I thought I had I seen it all, but no. I think that pets should be banned from Twitter, period. It is so puerile and infantile to be beyond discussion, and it is the kind of thing one only associates with the too rich/too famous celebrity, who have got just too much time and money on their hands. The kind of people who have such "a great life" that they need to get a life, if you catch my drift!
I am beginning to believe that Twitter should be banned for those (who are neither a celebrity nor a business person) over 30, as a way of preventing them from totally embarrassing themselves when grown. All of this checking-in at cool places, wanting to become the Mayor of Joe's Greasy Spoon that seats twenty, Instagramming oneself in the hairdresser's chair, and creating a Twitter account for a canine, is the surest sign of delusions of grandeur, smartphone addiction, and the need to go back and buy a real life in one of those fancy hotels or stores! Kevin Mc
No comments:
Post a Comment