To Twitter or not to Twitter!

Today I thought I would post my own few words in defence of the latest in a long line of that which is the latest of the virtual-social-networking-phenomenon, 'Twitter'.

If you don't Twitter this will probably sound like double dutch to you, but if you do, chances are you do it for little more than a bit of fun and to make a few virtual friends....and that is my point, what is the issue with that?

There will always be high brow intellectuals standing on the sidelines ready to denigrate anything but that alone is not a reason to assume something is completely worthless!

Twitter, if you have never got to it yet is simple, you choose to 'follow' other individuals and are 'followed' yourself, by whoever chooses to do so, from there on in you get 140 characters to say what you are doing at that moment.

All sound a bit inane? Well you would be right, it is, it is just truncated conversation but as Charlie Brooker of The Guardian says in his column today it is "strangely compelling".

We Twitterers are a diverse bunch and include everyone from the Jane Doe's such as myself to the rich and famous such as Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and The Dalai Lama....and for me that is where the interest is, 'meeting' people, I otherwise wouldn't ever get to meet. I don't necessarily mean the celebs among the twittering fraternity, though some are very interesting, but the normal people, going about their normal lives, who quite quickly become friends.

This may all sound suspiciously like a 'chat room' and once you have a group of friends set up, it does have a tendency to veer from purely tweeting 'what I am doing' to more 'conversation' but thus far it differs greatly from the old chat rooms (and believe me I am a self confessed ex-veteran of IRC, I know what they could be like)in that those that Twitter seem mostly to be professional articulate individuals (ok, that's me out), as opposed to odd-bods up to no good! Sadly I suspect as time goes by the odd-bods will find a way in, as the spammers are already beginning too, but that unfortunately is a part of life that we have to deal with in all areas. Twitter does differ greastly though in that you can choose for only those you wish to, to see your 'Tweets', it's not necessarily open to all-comers.

The old argument which has always been levelled against all forms of virtual social networking (and I'm not a fan of all, Facebook for instance I really quite dislike but that's another story) is of course that these aren't 'real' people but I beg to differ. I may not be able to look them in the face or hear their voice but at the end of a line of text there is of course another human being sat at a keyboard, just as I am and I believe, certainly as adults, it's not terribly difficult to tell quite quickly if someone is being less than genuine. Add to that, given that both my partner and my best friend are people I first met virtually through blogging, it would be hard for me to have faith in the 'these are not real people' train of thought.

No, social networking is not going out and meeting people face to face it's true, in the main I will never actually get to meet most of these people but as long as we keep a perspective and balance why should that be a bad thing as opposed to just a 'different' way of interacting and why is it that the intellectuals appear to assume that anything that is 'just fun' is to be criticised? Almost everything has a negative side if we look for it, football for instance, something which in this country is almost a 'religion' for many, but is in fact ostensibly just a game, costs the NHS a fortune in cruciate ligament surgery and has a tendency to attract violence here and there but there is no doubting it also makes many people lives much more pleasurable!

Yes, like many things I'm sure Twitter can be distracting and perhaps a little addictive but that's not a new phenomenon, it's the case with many things, good and bad, but one thing it certainly is for those of us that enjoy it is fun, entertaining, quite often informative and sociable and in my humble opinion that isn't a bad thing.

Like the inimitable Stephen Fry, he who has over 100,000 followers and 'tweets' hilariously is quoted as saying, "some people just don't get it"...and that's fine, we are all interested/entertained by different things but what aggravates me is why those that don't 'get it' feel they have to criticise it almost on principle! I could go into all kinds of psychological theories and principles on that aspect but I won't bore you any longer! If you don't 'get it', that's cool but don't critisise us who do, purely because we do!


....and incidentally, if you are interested my Twitter I.D is 'gemmak500'. All comers welcome :o)