Well, I must say that using Twitter has never crossed my mind. I tend to be a very private person and I have absolutely no idea what I would say using the Twitter forum. Similarly, I am very lucky to be able to talk to my close friends about the important things in our lives. Further, I typically think that when individuals obsessively use Twitter to note and distribute the basic events in their day ( breakfast cereal seems to be the stock example), these people are engaging the practice of digital narcissism. The Daily Mail has a great article about this facet of Twitter and other social media sites. For instance, author Cosmo Landesman writes “But how can I tell people what I watched on TV or share the other boring bits of my life when those boring bits bore even me? Don’t these people ever stop and wonder: ‘Is anyone really that interested in me?’ Answer: no, they don’t.They just assume that when it comes to their life, everyone wants to be in the loop and kept up to date” (emphasis added).
The mundane aspects of my life do bore me – and I only feel the need to share these details with a close few, whom I am sure I bore. I am reminded of a story that happened to me when I was 20 and traveling in Europe. I was staying in Krk, an island that is part of Croatia. I happened to meet an Austrian women from Vienna who promptly asked me what I knew of Austria. The first think that came to mind was Rilke; I had just read, for the first time, Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke. She immediately asked me to quote a clever line from Rilke. My response of course was “ummmmm….” The deer in the headlights expression clearly indicated that I was caught off guard. I guess I am reminded of this story because if I speak “to the world” I want it to be meaningful and interesting. But in order to do this, I need time to process my ideas and “chew things over.” Perhaps I could have quoted something brilliant from Rilke, but not after only reading Letters to a Young Poet once. So, not only do I think that there are risks of digital narcissism involved in using Twitter, but it is also too fast for me!
But on the other hand, there are some people who are genuinely interested in all the mundane details of peoples’ lives. So much so, they would hardly call these “facts” about another person mundane at all. Steven Johnson of Time cites in his article, “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live“, that “Twitter turns out to have unsuspected depth. In part this is because hearing about what your friends had for breakfast is actually more interesting than it sounds. The technology writer Clive Thompson calls this ‘ambient awareness’.” Point well taken. But even Johnson admits that Twitter “makes a terrible first impression.” True again.
Well, now its time for me to examine some of the positive things I think Twitter has going for it:
First, I like how Twitter and all different forms of social media are being used to keep people updated on politics. Obama’s blog and Twitter account are great ways of keeping the public informed and are tools that will keep him politically accountable. After reviewing each site, it seems that they both mention the same topics. After noting this comparison, now I only look at his blogs because I prefer to gain a more indepth awarenmess of public issues; nevertheless, for people who don’t have time for this, Twitter is a great alternative.
Additionally, Lev Grossman reported in his article “Iran Protests: Twitter, the Medium of the Movement” how Twitter was instrumental in keeping protestors, dissidents, and the world updated on the Iranian election protests. How freaking cool is that?!! While the Iranian newspapers were full of blank, censored spaces, information ran freely through Tweets. Twitter, hence, is “ideal for a mass protest movement,v[and is] both very easy for the average citizen to use and very hard for any central authority to control.” But on the other hand, as Grossman warns, the government of Iran uses the medium to track protests, dissidents, and dissident behavior. Iran is notorious for controlling the media, and one has to speculate why the government hasn’t blocked Twitter so far.
Johnson, Steven. “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live.” Time. 5 Jun. 2009. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604-1,00.html.
Landesman, Cosmo. “The Age of Narcissism: How Millons Delight in Revaeling Every Detail of Their Lives, No Matter How Embarassing or Mundane.” The Daily Mail Online. 17 May 2010. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1278968/From-YouTube-Facebook-Welcome-age-narcissism.html.
3 replies on “To Twitter or Not?”
Hi Shawna,
Thanks for explaining “digital narcissism” – I’ve never heard of the term before. I myself have referred to friends of mine who post everything they do everywhere as “self-paparazzi”, but I think the ideas are the same.
I just got my very first twitter account for this course, partly because I don’t have a cell phone and I thought that was how you received tweets (I’m already learning so much!) but also I didn’t know whose tweets I’d be interested in getting. I know that celebrities tweet and you can get news updates and stuff, but like you, I don’t know what the heck I’d tweet about. At the same time, I can see that once I started, I’d start to share more and more personal information as I became more comfortable with the medium and once it’s out there, that’s it!
Hi Shawna,
So happy that you wrote this post – it’s something that I am interested in too but as usual you tackled the topic in a much more interesting way than I could have!
I have ignored social media for a variety of reasons, and one of them is that, like you, I think it promotes narcissism. I remember walking home from work one day and texting a short message to my husband. I don’t remember what it was about, but I remember thinking “why does anyone need to know this? It’s minutiae and not even Nathan needs to know this.” I hated that I felt as though someone had to know each little detail of my life. I deleted the text and from then on, I make sure I’m texting people with purpose. Anyway, the incident also made me think about Twitter: like text messages, tweets can only be so long (140 characters), and like text messages, they might be best left private.
I recently signed up for a Twitter account, as it was recommended in Module 1, but I don’t feel as though I’ll keep it up after the class. So far I’ve been enjoying everyone’s tweets, but I haven’t found the platform as a whole very useful on a personal level. I do have to concede, though, that I see Twitter as being more useful for libraries with each day. I do think it’s a great platform for quickly and concisely getting messages out to a large group of people. Just the other day, VPL’s tweeted about the Britannia branch being closed while the air conditioning was being fixed. There was also a tweet announcing the branch’s opening date. Definitely useful, and a quick way to get a message out!
Anyway, I really enjoyed your post. Thanks again!
I don’t think I could come up with a clever quote from any book I’ve ever read off the top of my head – she was expecting a lot from you!
I’ve always felt the same way about not wanting to intrude into the mundane details of other peoples lives. As you mention, however, and Dean has continually reminded us – there’s a lot more to be made of these platforms than just posting our breakfast routines and personal interests.
The challenging part (for me at least) has been to balance the ‘professionally relevant’ information and the personal tibdits that inevitably flood my facebook and twitter feeds.