I'm taking a break from "social networking".
More specifically, I'm taking a break from networking with random people on Twitter. For free. For the purposes of entertainment or curiosity. (In other words, I'm still doing it when there's a check involved.)
Normally, I keep my online social networking un-networked and very compartmentalized. Facebook is for friends and family to stay connected. Twitter is for strangers - preferably
friendly strangers...
But that's not always the case, now is it?
Last May, I created a Twitter account to maximize the time I devote to catching up on the goings-on of the world. I discovered that I could search for anything and I'll get an entire stream of news on anything. A news junkie's paradise, right?
Or so I thought.
A friend encouraged me for months to join Twitter, but I wasn't convinced. That is...until we watched the White House Correspondent's Dinner on C-Span and I saw tweets scrolling across the bottom of the screen. The narcissist in my head whispered that she had some thoughts to share, too.
Wouldn't you like to see your thoughts on there, too?! Yes, yes I would. So I created an account, typed in some random thoughts to see them stream across C-Span. I couldn't see them, so I began typing in more for testing purposes.
We figured out that if we click on #nerdprom, we could see the White House Correspondent Dinner tweets and I might see mine.
I read and laughed and typed.
Then I saw this number to my right.
Me: What are followers?
Friend: I don't know.
Me: The number keeps going up.
Within 30 minutes, I was at 65 before I finally figured out that these were people who "subscribed" to reading what I typed.
After the
#WHCD was over, I didn't have much else to write. My Twitter purpose was fulfilled.
But then I saw
#unfollowdiddy.
Anyone who knows me well knows how I feel about Diddy. I had years of bitterness stored up about some of my favorite artists getting a raw deal from this
career-killer soul-snatcher "businessman".
So I had a lot of #unfollowdiddy material in me...
Then I learned how to reply to people who wrote to me.
And just like that, Twitter became an episode of the Twilight Zone where a wish fulfilled turns into a nightmare. The more I read, the more I thought. The more I thought, the more I commented. The more I commented, the more people paid attention and replied. I couldn't hide away as just a reader while on "stage".
Twitter began to feel like my public online diary - a place to deposit my thoughts in bitesize form to remind me of certain events in my life.
I didn't expect complete strangers to care about what I thought
and take it as an invitation to battle. But they did.
Early on, everyone was friendly. They showed me the Twitter ropes and told me to put up a picture so I wouldn't be mistaken as a "bot".
I didn't plan to be on Twitter for long, so I asked my friend what picture to use. Her suggestion? "Use mine!"
She's a sociology grad student who was studying the effects of social media on American pop culture and business. I love sociology, so I was game.
As weeks went by, I actually found myself enjoying the people that I conversed with on Twitter. After my friend's research was done, I decided to become a permanent presence and changed my picture to reflect
me. Some
shallow people felt betrayed. Most didn't. I never said the picture was of me so *shrug*. I'm a strong proponent of letting people believe what they want to believe when it's not an important subject matter to me.
Anyyyyway...That was 8 months and 30k+ thousand tweets ago.
Since May '09, I've had some wonderful and enlightening conversations, "met" some great people, beefed with some and caught a few headaches.
But now...it's time for a break (
and here's why). At least for awhile.
As with any break up, I like to leave on a good note
to prevent Bag Lady Syndrome by reviewing the positives.
Thanks to Twitter, I got over my fear of sharing some of my inner truths with others, of speaking (well, writing) my mind
before shit hits the fan. Fellow tweeters congratulated, reinforced and challenged my views. All of this allowed me to see other perspectives - something I get in abundance in "real life" by necessity (work) or from family and friends who enjoy playing the devil's advocate. However, in all of these offline circumstances, there's a line that none of us cross...because we want to maintain our relationships.
But with strangers, there's no line. Or maybe the line is invisible.
Through Twitter, I was able to see how far I would go with people who I violently disagree with and see how far they would go with me. As my mom likes to say, I'm a "show me" person. I'm not satisfied with just "knowing" something. I want to KNOW it. The only way to KNOW something is to test my hypotheses. And then I form theories based on the results of my experiments. The experiment can last for 10 seconds or a few weeks. But at the end of the day, I learned something that I will remember and apply going forward.
Twitter also encouraged me to restart blogging. I've been a writer for as long as I can remember. I began writing in my first journal at 8 years old. To others, I was a happy child who had many friends, performed well in school, was in many extracurricular activities. But my journal was my
real best friend. The one who kept all of my secrets and never judged me - even when I judged myself. And I could count on it repeating back to me what I was feeling verbatim - an archive of my feelings, thoughts, life moments! My journal is my friend that just listens to me, without needing me to first listen for hours at a time, without expecting me to come up with the right encouraging words to make it feel better. All it wanted in return for its friendship is to be used and cherished. Done and done!
It was my first - and only - truly reciprocal and balanced relationship.
Just the thought of anyone reading my thoughts was enough to send shivers down my back. Oh, you should have seen the security system I rigged up to make sure that never happened!
So I thank Twitter for providing me with a place online to share my thoughts - though not exactly a safe place, it is one full of immediate feedback
from random psychos.
But I'll be going back to my old way of getting
soundbite news.
In the meanwhile, I'll continue to share my random thoughts about life here and
on my other blog.
Random Readers, if you're interested in reading and sharing your thoughts, too, then that's great.
If you want to keep in touch with me, let me know in the comments section and I'll give you my contact info.
But even if you don't want to read my thoughts or contact me, I'll still be here - writing until the world makes sense to me.
BONUS:
Want to publish your first 3200 tweets or keep them as a souvenir? Click
here.
Posts
