Nicholas Lezard: So you're eating lunch? Fascinating
I've nothing against Stephen Fry. But I certainly have against Twitter
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Independent Minds
Where does one start with the momentous news that Stephen Fry was considering leaving Twitter? Apparently someone, although broadly sympathetic to Fry in general – no, better, someone who admired and adored him – complained that some of his tweets, as I gather they are called, were "a bit... boring." Fry took hurt, and announced his intentions before having a re-think.
Now, I have nothing against Stephen Fry, although one questions the wisdom of someone with an easily-bruised ego telling 800,000 people that he's eating a sandwich and expecting every one of them to be thrilled by the news, but I certainly have something against Twitter.
The name tells us straightaway: it's inconsequential, background noise, a waste of time and space. Actually, the name does a disservice to the sounds birds make, which are, for the birds, significant, and for humans, soothing and, if you're Messiaen, inspirational. But Twitter? Inspirational?
No – it's inspiration's opposite. The online phenomenon is about humanity disappearing up its own fundament, or the air leaking out of the whole Enlightenment project. In short, I feel about Twitter the way some people feel about nuclear weapons: it's wrong. It makes blogging look like literature. It's anti-literature, the new opium of the masses.
Its unreflective instantaneousness encourages neurotic behaviour in both the tweeters and the twatted (seriously, the Americans have proposed that "twatted" should be the past participle of "tweet", which is the only funny thing about the whole business); it encourages us in the delusion that our random thoughts, our banal experiences, are significant. It is masturbatory and infantile, and the amazing thing is that people can't get enough of it – possibly because it IS masturbatory and infantile.
Answering the question: "Why do so many people seem to like Twitter?" Twitter itself does not say: "Because people are idiots with a steadily decreasing attention span, and 140 characters is pretty much all anyone has space for in their atrophied brains any more," but instead, "People are eager to connect with other people and Twitter makes that simple."
Twitter asks one question: "What are you doing?" (It also adds, in the next paragraph, that "Twitter's core technology is a device agnostic message routing system with rudimentary social networking features", and I hope that clears everything up for you.)
Oh God, that it should have come to this. Centuries of human thought and experience drowned out in a maelstrom of inconsequential rubbish (and don't tell me about Trafigura – one good deed is not enough, and an ordinary online campaign would have done the trick just as well). It is like some horrible science-fiction prediction come to pass: it is not just that Twitter signals the end of nuanced, reflective, authoritative thought – it's that no one seems to mind.
And I suspect that it's psychologically dangerous. We have evolved over millions of years to learn not to bore other people with constant updates about what we're doing (I'm opening a jar of pickles ... I'm picking my nose ... I'm typing out a message on Twitter ...) and we're throwing it all away. Twitter encourages monstrous egomania, and the very fact that Fry used Twitter to announce that he was leaving Twitter shows his dependence on it. He was never going to give it up. He's addicted to it.
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Comments
I don't agree that every interaction we have with people has to be well thought through or even significantly meaningful. Twitter sometimes acts like a friendly wave or a nod hello rather than a well considered message, but this is part of the charm of it.
That twitter has become so popular might indicate that people have a hunger for this kind of informal sociability. There is room for all sorts of human communication and twitter fills a need for a fast and simple way to keep in touch and meet others.
http://pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?bot
Just a recap, since Mr. Lezard seems to have misplaced the memo: YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE PART OF IT IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT.
The fact is that among the sandwiches and nosepicking, people have done real, useful things. From small things like making and catching up with friends, sharing information, recruiting staff and expanding customer services to bigger things like getting stray animals into homes and raising thousands of pounds & dollars for worthwhile causes - often the ones that don't get the mass media airtime Mr. Lezard is enjoying.
Some people use it just because of the egotistical element (it doesn't encourage it, merely channel it. The likes of X Factor are far more socially and psychologically damaging, given what they've done to people's expectations of the hard work-success ratio and what a 'good' life really means). Those people don't get followed much.
There are also sandwiches and nosepicking. Such is life.
Irrespective of Fry's bipolar disorder, he is sufficiently intelligent to recognise Twitter is open to all and is not an intimate conversation with those who adore him, so perhaps, if he is unable to accept the rough with the smooth, he should find another crutch for his ego.
Twitter provides me with alerts of software updates and sports news, so it is useful for that. Random musings from the lonely are not useful at all, so, if they fail to amuse or inspire thought, they are perhaps best withheld. Suffice to say, I don't follow Stephen Fry on Twitter any more.
It's also a social medium, so if you're being spectacularly boring, no-one will interact with you, you'll get bored, you give up using it. If anything, the way it works encourages people NOT to post details of their lunch. Because, generally, lunch isn't that interesting. On that score, this column is spot on. Not sure about the rest of it - but then I did write a column for this very newspaper a year ago saying that "Columns saying that Twitter is boring are boring". I could just paste it in here, but that would probably come across as "monstrous egomania", too.
'Twitter encourages monstrous egomania, and the very fact that Fry used Twitter to announce that he was leaving Twitter shows his dependence on it.' Just a gentle reminder that Stephen Fry is an open and self-confessed sufferer of bi-polar disorder and it is monstrously clear from tweets before and after that he is having what Winston Churchill referred to as one of his Black Dog days. He even opines his increased sensitivity to criticism when he is low – this is not monstrous egotism, unlike say an opinion piece that carries very little merit as an item of journalism or enlightenment of any kind.
Also: 'It makes blogging look like literature.' – blogging is normally (like this wonderful piece of literature that Nicholas has graced us with) comment on social events, like a diary. Admittedly, like diary writers throughout time, there will naturally be a lot of writing that nobody would be interested in but Samuel Pepys anyone? Who would argue that his 'blogging' has not formed an important thread in the fabric on English literature.
If only there were some way he could be absorbed into the Twit-ether, and never drone on to us again.
I have never been on Twitter in my life, nor wish to.
I am pissed off with having Stephen Fry metaphorically shoved up my nose on TV, radio and now in the press. If you bothered to read my post you might just have gathered this.
I have my opinion of those who use Twitter, but that's not fit for publication. But sadly you seem a typical user...
I agree with the sentiment, of course, but I'm not sure the author had to bash us bloggers!
http://love-of-turnips.blogspot.com/
Use it on the bus home or the tube to work by all means (if you can't deal with the real world around you) but the fact is that you shouldn't be using it while in that meeting, during Commons debates (you shower of MPs), at School, etc etc. If I'm giving a lecture (or whatever) and you're tweeting then I find that exceptionally rude and it's just another example of the wonderful society we now live in. Fry, Sarah Brown et al obviously have far too much time on their hands and don't really need to work so can tweet to their heart's content.
I, for one, am fed up with this moronic slide into technological aural contraceptives (mobiles, iPods, tweeting etc etc) and the anti-social behaviour it's promoting - top marks for the author of this article.
Okay.... I think Twitter is an abomination and should die a swift (though hopefully painful) death.
But... that the Americans want to talk seriously about being "twatted" is worth it all... I can just imagine the conversations, and the listening-in Brit trying to hold back the laughter...
And just as twitter reflects (possibly) the most banal of human ‘thought’, it also allows spaces for those who seek to further knowledge and spread information faster and more efficiently. Had Lezard been on twitter at the time of the recent Iranian uprising he would have been part of a very cosmopolitan, and inspiring, exchange of tweets; information and ideas were both in abundant supply.
Many users today use their twitter accounts as information portals. Blaming twitter for “Centuries of human thought and experience drowned out in a maelstrom of inconsequential rubbish” is ridiculous. The fault lies within our reality, not our tweets.
By the same metric, one could easily say that word processing software is boring, although having read what Lezard uses it for, that would be a very easy conclusion to draw.
I know it's tough to write X amount of words per day/week, but really...
In my industry it helps me tie up with other people in a similar field, share issues/ideas/thoughts etc. And of course to tweet inane drivel at them whenever I see fit. Fortunately the positive far outweighs the negative in my opinion.
You don't have to follow people who don't say things you find interesting. You don't have to follow anybody at all. It's choice. You have one.
http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entri
As to be being a negative to people - I guess it can to people that get obsessive about such things. For the average well balanced individual though it's just another tool to use in their daily lives.
The rapid technological revolution of this Millenium, along with globalisation, has made the world in which we live in today a lot smaller. Social-networking has surpassed the fad stage and has become a multi-million pound / dollar industry.
Myspace and YouTube have provided a platform for unsigned musicians, artists, comedians and film-makers etc to express themselves literally instantly. Gone are the days where creative types have to wait for the industry to come to them. Facebook makes it easier to re-connect with people that you may have lost touch with. It adopted the Friends Re-united platform and turned it into a huge business. Twitter allows us to connect with others with simple, brief statements (using Facebook's 'Status bar' idea) about what we are doing, what music and films we recommend etc
For 99% of social-networking users, it is just a bit of fun. The fact that the entertainment industries have harnessed these sites and use them brilliantly to get their product seen by a huge potential market, should tell you that social-networking also has a substance, value, potential and credibility - none of which feature in your article.
By the way, I would recommend looking at this page - https://twitter.com/TheIndyNews
Twitter can indeed be all the things that you say it can, but then so can the net generally. However, it's not the resource itself, it's the way that it's put to use. I use Twitter to keep up to date with news headlines, I ask questions, answer questions, find out if a site is up or down, check out information on hoaxes and viruses. I keep in contact with other professionals, follow conferences that I'm unable to attend myself, identify experts in particular areas, locate interesting articles to read, videos to check out, infantile journalistic articles to laugh at - a whole host of different uses. And not once do I see the 'what I'm having for breakfast' type posts - because the people that I follow don't tweet that nonsense. If they do, then I stop following them.
I really would suggest that Mr Lezard actually tries to use Twitter for 24 hours with an open and unbiased approach; I suspect that he'll then feel rather foolish reading back over this inaccurate and illinformed piece of nonsensical fluff.
Not every tweet will be exciting or interesting, much like this article about twitter is possibly one of the most boring I've ever read. If you deem it newsworthy, it must be worth something, no? Or you're just a very shoddy, lazy journalist.
And how someone with such an air of superiority as yours dares to deem anything else masturbatory is beyond me. I would bet that when you finished typing this "report" you had to reach for a box of tissues.
Epic fail.
LOL.
People use it and they like it. It's not dangerous. That's all there is to know.
Twitter is useful to those who find it useful and engaging. If you don't know how to use it, and you clearly don't, don't knock it. @barstep
Mr Lezard, whilst I suspect that it will fall on deaf ears, I would suggest you do well to stop being such a pompous patronizing twat.