Here we are once again on one of our fave subjects/pet peeves - the contribution, utilisation and outright abuse of that supposedly revolutionary tool - social media. Yes, that tool, the one that has changed ordinary lives everywhere and seemingly turns everyone into their own mini-superstar species, where previously totally mundane thoughts or statements are now deemed fit for the masses - because people care! Hardly.
The app that sees the most abuse is that old favourite, Twitter. I think the genius of Twitter was the addictiveness stealthily written into its code, as evidenced by the number of times I have read people stating that it is physically getting in the way of their lives and work, so they will be exiting Twitter at least temporarily, if not for the longer term. Freudian slip or not, there is meaning in the fact that the first four letters of Twitter spell t-w-i-t. In many ways the aforementioned genius of Twitter is the Twit in Twitter - it's the perfect forum on which twits everywhere can display, and that has begun to include various high profile celebs of late.
It's one thing for a superstar to let their followers know where they buy coffee, which restaurants they are patrons at (as if anyone else can afford it) and which brand of toilet paper is their preferred choice, and why. The sheep will always follow what an artificially elevated opinion (celebrity) says or does, and there is just something so comforting being in the bathroom and knowing that this lovely three-ply tissue is the same one that so-and-so uses on their bum too. Uh huh.
Don't get me started on the self-appointed (as well as mass-appointed) importance of celebrity in the modern world, because that's an entire story in and of itself. I want to focus on the abject non-celebrity-as-pseudo-celebrity species that is rampant on ol' Twits. You know who I mean, right? Yes, you or me. Him or her. Maybe Joe Public or Jane Dolittle. Someone with a sufficiently uninteresting life that an inordinate amount of time gets spent on Twitter making it sound or feel better, screaming out to no one in particular.
This species is easy to find on Twitter, and there are a few easy-to-spot qualifiers that clinch the category. A very typical symptom is the number of followers vs those being followed - after initially being impressed that the person has a reasonable 1341 followers, one observes that they in turn follow 1893 individuals. Ah, okay. The follow-to-be-followed syndrome. If I follow you, will you be so kind to follow me back, even though neither of us have any idea who the other actually is, but that doesn't matter, right? We have zero interest in each other apart from wanting the follow to add to my total. How can anyone truly follow over a thousand individuals/entities anyway? It's a complete contradiction.
Another key sign is the weight given to the number of followers, seemingly irrespective of how many one is following. On more than one occasion I have even seen proud celebratory (sounds like celebrity!) statements regarding the achievement of "my 1000th follower", even though that is completely normal for anyone following a few thousand people. But if one focuses only on number of followers, well, we are our very own little mini-celebrity and people listen to what we have to say! Actually, not.
Once this impressive level of pseudo-celebrity has been achieved, what comes next is the mini-Godhead (i.e. any typical rock star) syndrome, where one suddenly does a 180, and begins to believe that even the most normal and mind-crushingly mundane aspects of a normal life are of any significance whatsoever to other normal people living their similarly insignificant lives. Before all the do-gooders and finger pointers begin to yelp, let me clarify things by classifying the term "insignificant" to mean in terms of to anyone beyond close friends and family.
In other words, where you decide to brunch to help soothe last night's hangover is of about as much public interest as that pimple on your bum. Well, no, actually, if you were to stick a pic of that up on Instagram/Twitter and it's a desired bum, well, now maybe that could take you viral! But you get my point. A particularly offensive aspect of the Godhead syndrome is the soon-to-be-a-criminal-offence habit of putting up pics of plates of food or even empty plates from this supposed hot spot, or that one, or even, God forbid, from the boyfriend's kitchen table.
This is such an offensive act that it should come with a mandatory period of (Twitter) incarceration as punishment, if the social media police can find you. Such offenders should be put into a padded cell with ten 42" LED screens on the walls that display nothing but food pics from all over the world, with typically inane 140 character drivel beneath them spoken out loud by the latest text-to-voice software. "This empty plate shows just how good the food is at Bistro X!" and "I am so lucky to have such a BF, look what he did earlier this evening!" (presumably not least because she can barely boil water herself) or "Currently at Sushi Y with six others. Check this amazing sashimi, people!" Yawn.
The unwritten text being "I am so hip and cool", naturally. It's not about anyone caring, or wanting to know, or the Twit wanting to share their keen insight and clinically good taste with the masses; rather it's an attempt to point out how hip and cool they are, and please feel free to comment accordingly below my post. But therein lies the rub, dear friends. When you do look to see who is waiting with baited breath for them to post something/anything, well, quite tragically (not) one observes that typically, nobody seems to notice or care. Occasionally you will see a "Cool! We were there last Saturday night, at the re-launch party prior to opening night, it was awesome!" and we all know what the subtext of that kind of response is, right?
Another sickening trend among the Twit wannabes is that godawful hashtag verbosity that pervades the medium today. The second I see this malaise, I mark the person as a total Twit pretender and I move on. What am I talking about exactly? I will give you an example - "Hanging out with the chef/owner at Bar Z, love this place! #Toronto #Cool Bars #Saturday Night #Food #Drinks #Restaurants #R&R #Buzzed #Hotspots". I don't know what it is about this habit that makes those who do it feel somehow cool or hip, because it simply marks them as classical Twits. Not least due to having a clear lack of anything resembling "content" to fill up the 140 character space with, so better fill it up with nausea-inducing additions to their hashtagged little lives.
You actually see this bad habit used by a lot of wannabes who work in the PR and communications fields, and they truly should know better. They are supposed to know that cool social media is not only about content, which is key in and of itself, but more specifically it is useful content that counts. Not hashtagged gibberish masquerading as cool content. But adding in multiple related hashtags apparently implies a kind of Twits "sophistication", so folks pile them on, when in fact they actually exhibit a clear and total lack of articulation sophistication. The great irony being that it is these very people who tout their social media expertise and are even charged with handling the social media profiles of various accounts. Check their profiles, see how magnificently average and uncreative they are, and move on, people!
Furthermore, these are often people who also create Twitter accounts for their pets (don't get me started on that, puh-leaaase!), and that kind of says it all, I'm afraid. Once we get non-humanoid non-language speaking creatures running around Twitter barking to us about their lives, well, it's clearly the end of the world as we know it, and they feel fine. I imagine. This is a key point though - anyone who makes the time to create and update a Twitter profile for an animal truly needs to get a real life and stop being a Twit. Make that Total Twit. It's staggeringly underwhelming, and it should be illegal for any so-called adult beyond their teens to create an account for an animal - for anyone beyond the age of thirty it should come with an automatic ban from Twitter.
Here at EU we are in the publishing world, and we see our fair share of the Twit phenotype in this area also. Stereotypically, perhaps, it's kind of a cutesy club of bored housewives (but erstwhile new authors) who join forces in a mutually exclusive (and mutually sycophantic) support group. It's all threaded with a palpable need for attention, with a million cutesy comments about chocolate, drinking, candies, lack of sleep, the blank page, the next chapter and so on, and on. We are so cool, because we are writers! Indeed.
But even there, you detect a hierarchy that is based on who actually has a book deal, and therefore is a real writer. (S)he is the leader of the pack, and knows it, and is often the most guilty of self-aggrandising Twits-4-attention posts, and the masses gush with virtual affection at even the most banal of statements such as "I have started Chapter 4 of my new old-adult sci-fi romance! Who's excited?!" I find it all to be so suspect, because the Queen is only there to taste adulation from her (not so) loyal subjects, who are in turn only there to try to get their own deal, maybe after a year or two of kissing some royally published a**.
We at EU didn't want to be involved in any of that nonsense, and right from the start refused offers to join in, and join the club, or take advice from some completely self-appointed self-publishing "gurus" who expect to be at the centre of the sheep Twitterverse, and God forbid, even extract a price for their "services" from totally lost sheep. I feel real sympathy for anyone who bought their line that social media marketing was the way to sell their book (not a lie, per se) and that the guru knew how to do it - for a price. Taking courses from someone on new media where there are almost no rules, little professionalism and the crux of the matter being one word - communication - is just plain crazy! Show me a "writer" who cannot communicate in writing on social media, and I will show you someone who clearly cannot write! Better keep that day job, after all.
And you know, more than in almost any other form of entertainment, true writers are almost exclusively not those who need/seek media attention or a world watching their every move. One reason they became writers was to work away from society, in their own space and on their own time, based on a world that exists primarily only in their own heads. These are not the people you see in the Twitter support groups, because they are too busy, wait for it, actually writing. What a concept! I guess there are those who do, and those who spend all day (and night) talking about doing.
Writers are supposed to be mysterious creatures, hidden away from the world. I cannot think of anything more demystifying than to hear all the boring stops and starts of even a famous author on their next book. How exciting can it be to hear someone scrapped a new chapter, or hit a block at the 35,000th word, or plot-boarded three new novels in one single week? Uh huh. We don't want any part in such shenanigans, or in any of the sins outlined above, and if that somehow makes us look less hip, well, we can surely live with that and we will continue to sleep deep at night.
The Twit-o-sphere is alive and well, and I guess as long as it exists, it will be the masses who dominate it, and, well, everyone seems to want to be a star. Such is the cult of celebrity in 2014 society, and if I can feel like a celebrity by hashtagging, and foodie pic posting, and letting the world know where I am at any given moment on a Friday night, then I will. Just don't show up there, just don't remind me that none of my 2,000 "followers" ever seem interested enough to respond, and don't tell me that I am up to a whopping 6,000 posts - sent primarily to, take a deep breath, myself.
It is the outright equivalent of virtual self-flagellation and online masturbation: talking to oneself, about oneself, to pleasure oneself. In fact, I am giving masturbation a bad name, because that is usually done in honour of another (in our heads), whereas the millions of premature ejaculations seen on Twits are the output of people pleasuring themselves in front of a mirror. That's really something else, and it should be outlawed by the social media police, in order to make Twitter a safer, healthier place to be.
Can we all just go back to worshiping real celebrities on Twitter, and listening to their output and opinion on all subjects of interest, and ban individuals with nothing to say from commenting? As Morrissey once said, most people have nothing to say of any interest or significance whatsoever, and even though I suspect he was being typically provocative, one cannot help but feel that he was totally on the mark. Bullseye, in fact!
On that note, I don't suppose I dare elaborate on which exotic dark roast I have sourced for my Sunday morning coffee this weekend? I would be committing a sin of a most heinous nature, but then again, this is my blog, it's not Twitter, so then that doesn't count, right? Well, "quit while you're ahead" might be the best philosophy on this one, mister! Okay. Done! ;) - Kevin Mc
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