Now that Facebook and Twitter have entered our lives so very insidiously, the connected world has divided into two types of people – those for whom Facebook is a lifeline, who vicariously live out their lives through status updates and posted pictures and those who tweet about each and everything that happens to them. Though there are those who are active on the two, most people, in my experience, have a preference for one or the other. There are, of course, the few who shun both ... and while there is a certain coolness perhaps in claiming that "I don't do social media" its damn irritating when you want to connect with them. E mail just seems so old school.
Facebook of course is great for connecting, sharing and generally keeping in touch. It is easy to use, most people’s parents and even grandparents jostle for space on their timeline along with their BFFs, love interests, potential love interests and childhood friends. It makes for an occasionally uneasy mishmash and the need to self-regulate, but it is an extremely useful way of staying in touch, connecting with old friends, and peeping into people’s lives. After all, who hasn’t scrolled through the pictures of people they haven’t seen for years to see whether they have aged well, been lucky or unlucky in love, and/or have photogenic children. There is a vicarious pleasure to be gained in viewing the most intimate of private moments from a relatively anonymous distance. The downside of Facebook of course is that it is all too easy to comment, share stuff and post pictures, and thus a fair amount of patience is required when trawling through other people’s invariably dull status updates (although one’s own are always obviously witty, incisive and interesting).
Twitter is a strange animal. Whereas the appeal of Facebook is obvious to anyone who has an iota of a social life, the Twittersphere is occupied by a bunch of people (well, millions actually) who think that recording their every action, thought and observation is a useful and relevant thing to do. They are obsessed by “trending” and being “retweeted” as if a random retweet from a celebrity really means that said celeb actually gives a damn what anyone else thinks. Brace yourselves Tweeple – no one on Twitter gives a shit about anyone else. They’re too busy trying to improve their own position in the invisible and highly complex Twitter caste system. You’re only as good as the number of people who “follow” you after all.
However, Facebook, it seems is “old school”. On a recent trip to the UK, I was told on a number of occasions by my obviously socially advanced British friends that Facebook is “so yesterday”. Apparently, Brits (and possibly Americans, though they are much more mob mentality than the snobbier Brits) are deserting Facebook in their droves. Twitter is apparently much “cooler” though personally, I can’t see the appeal. I naturally gravitated to, and still love, Facebook, and though I opened a Twitter account to see what all the fuss was about, I hate it. In my humble opinion, Twitter is for people with low attention spans, those who are obsessive social climbers and worse still, those who will happily ditch all semblance of grammar and accurate spelling to fit into that 140 character strait jacket. “You can watch the pulse of the world, as it happens,” cry the Twits. What rubbish. I can barely even understand what people are talking about thanks to their tendency to drop vowels everywhere (it is NEVER OK to write d instead of the, incidentally).
There, I’ve revealed my bias. I don’t care if Barack Obama has 33 million followers. Or if Amitabh Bacchan tweets to 5 million people. Although I can see how easy that would make life (anyone have a spare car/nanny/fiver I can borrow?) I don’t particularly want random people “following” my every comment and even “retweeting” it to their followers. Call me old fashioned, but I’ll stick to comfortably poking around my friends' Facebook updates and seeing how well they’re all aging. However, I will still tweet this blogpost. Ha!
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