So, I've mentioned many times how much I love Twitter. And I really do: it's become a big part of my daily routine, and I feel like my online interactions - with friends, with strangers, with people from my industry, with experts in various fields, with comedians and journalists - bring me into contact with a lot of thought-provoking ideas and some great, interesting, funny online content. And 'content' really is just a silly 21st century word for ideas again, so there you go. I might be kidding myself, but I feel like for me, life is enriched by what I find on Twitter.
That said, over the past 24 hours I've become more aware of a possible drawback of Twitter, and I wanted to talk about it a little here. Yesterday I threw myself into some serious discussion and a lot of piss-taking on the subject of Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time. I supported the BBC's decision to invite him on, and then I made fun of the ridiculous comments he made. I was lucky enough to have one of my tweets 'retweeted' - copied and distributed further - by the comedian Iain Lee, and another by Charlie Brooker, and suddenly I was getting retweeted by dozens of total strangers, and getting some lovely and funny responses.
The atmosphere on Twitter - from where I was sitting - was great last night. We all seemed to be in agreement: Nick Griffin is a repellent, bigoted and ignorant man and his policies are so ill-thought out and unpleasant that no one with any sense would vote for him - and those who have voted for him before have surely now seen him for the racist buffoon he really is. People were triumphant that he'd been shown up on national TV.
When I woke up this morning I felt much more uneasy about the whole thing. Here's the problem: on Twitter you don't have to follow anyone whose ideas you disagree with. Also for that reason, it's likely that the majority of the people who follow you will be more or less coming from the same point of view. It's a nice set-up - it makes you feel as though you're among friends and kindred spirits, because essentially what you're doing is tuning out everyone whose views you don't agree with.
In that sense, we might call Twitter a community, but it's got to be one of the only communities in which you can surround yourself only by people you like. You don't have to listen to the people who are talking about how great it is that Nick Griffin wants to tackle immigration, or how poor Nick is being victimised by the "lefty" BBC. It can give a very skewed perspective of public opinion, and when I logged back on to Twitter this morning, I was disappointed but not shocked to see Iain Lee commenting "Depressing night listening to TalkSport. Turns out most people thought Griffin came across well and they'll vote for him."
Well of course they did, because the listeners of TalkSport are most likely not the people I've been paying attention to. But they have as much right to vote as any of us, and if as a nation we are going to stop the BNP from growing in power then these people's concerns need to be addressed. Tearing apart racism to a bunch of people who already hate it is about as much use as sitting around a dinner table with close friends and putting the world to rights. All we're really doing is preaching to the choir, and (I know from personal experience) it can be dangerously easy to feel smug when everyone agrees with you.
I still love Twitter, and I'm not going to stop using it. It's great to find that there are many, many others out there who share your point of view, and I had a really good laugh reading their comments last night. But as a political tool I don't think it's going to achieve much, because it cordons us off into groups of like-minded people. There's dialogue and sometimes debate, but our views are rarely strongly challenged, and we aren't required to make any effort to listen to the people on the other side of the fence. When it comes to achieving any serious cultural change, unfortunately it falls to the other political parties to win back the respect of the voters, and to all of us to actually vote.
How should we say 2010?
Friday, 23 October 2009
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9 readers just couldn't let me have the last word:
Excellent post. Twitter is the noughties version of CB radio.
Great post. A nice viewpoint on the whole thing. There's little doubt that Mr. Griffin has put an extra spoonful of salt into the political mixer.
I wouldn't feel to uncomfortable about tweeting with like minded people, because there is little doubt that all of the right wing nutters are doing exactly the same with their followers.
The more people that are engaged in this conversation the better, With any luck, the turn out at the next general election will be better
Totally agree with preaching to the choir. I actually felt a bit uncomfortable every time the audience burst in to rapturous applause at the merest criticism of Griffin last night. It was a real opportunity to allow him to present his party's ideals and policies, and then to tear them to shreds. Unfortunately, I think it was an opportunity missed, and it DID turn in to a bit of a mob.
When he WAS allowed to speak, he came out with the most wonderfully ignorant drivel that, in hindsight, just allowing him to do a five minute, stand alone Party Political Broadcast would have been enough to dissuade anyone from voting for him ever again.
All it did was reinforce what a lot of us already knew. The man is a vile, vile person with some terribly bigoted views. Unfortunately, I didn't see any reason for anyone who HAS voted for him to change their minds after last night.
It is a difficult one because, with sites like Twitter, you do start off thinking quite positively and that things will be alright because everybody's in agreement that the man and his party are idiots, then the TalkSport thing will happen and it's just a bit of a come-down. It makes you start to think, "Oh well, there are more ignorant people out there than I thought..." and you begin to lose hope.
That being said, though, we know that Twitter does appear to consist mainly of lovely liberal people who all think the same way and, I don't think I'm generalising too much here when I say that the majority of people who get in touch with media such as TalkSport are right-wing... Both examples are just two extreme opposites, so we're not really going to get a clear indication of what the nation, as a whole, feels from either.
However, I am hopeful that the majority of people out there are still sensible and do not agree with the BNP at all. I have no doubt that Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time will not have done him or his party any favours though. I think that it won't have made anyone who votes for them change their mind about doing so, but at the same time, I doubt he'll have gained many voters from that performance.
I reckon people who are easily-swayed by Question Time appearances are also the type of people who it would only take some sort of rant or even enthusiasm to get the attention of. That "well, he knows what he's talking about, I've no idea what he said, but he's charismatic!" way of thinking. He was very dull. Everything he said was scrutinised that I doubt anyone really paid attention to his views. Also he, predictably, came across like someone who can't actually believe he's got a tiny bit of power, an ignorant buffoon. And a cunt.
(This comment is not as articulate as my first one, but I hope that it's sort-of easy to comprehend even in my ramble-ramble nature.)
V interesting, not to mention too smart for a Friday afternoon.
Last night I was reading a Marshall McLuhan book from 1963 last night and he talked about radio and how we all revert to tribalism and it sort of made me think of something less coherent but similar, more in relation to the nature of US talk radio - remember in recent elections how we all lamented Americans clinging to shamelessly partisan media? That may be all of us know. I know even educated, enlightened Goldacre/Dawkins/Brooker acolytes who seem utterly disinterested in even beginning to engage with why others think things they don't. If I felt strongly about things, I think I'd rather convert others to my views than simply affirm my sense of my rightness or community with them. Then again, it's an enormous unknowable world, so no wonder we seek solace in like minds and vaporous approximations of community and mutual comprehension.
In other news is there any good Fleetwood Mac albums that aren't Rumours or two songs off Tango in the Night? And also IMO one hasn't lived till one's watched the Rumours edition of Classic Albums.
And are people not supposed to like Buffy there days? I can only watch *any* telly ever, esp things like True Blood, if I remind myself not to ruin it by comparing it to the Slayer.
Great post. Though I've said that elsewhere I guess...
Couldn't resist replying to the Fleetwood Mac post above - get Tusk, it's their best by a long way. It cost something like $3m to make, which by 70s standards was an absolute shedload - and is unthinkable in today's climate.
Half of it was recorded without the musicians being in the same room as each other as they hated each other so much. The amount of - and I'm not sure who reads this blog so I'll just say um, 'refreshments' - consumed during the making of Tusk must have cost at least another million on top.
Get the original vinyl and it comes with original artist-designed inner sleeves and weighs about 1kg. Extravagant isn't the word.
Mr Hyde, many thanks for the top tips.
I will attempt a vinyl chase in my lunch hour but failing that will just buy the CD like a loser.
(PS, as meagre ta/fyi, there's some Rumours-related bumph for free viewing on http://www.rocksbackpages.com/ for a few days from about now.)
Ms Blogger, thanks for abundant recent output.
PS Some dude with a silly name seems to have stole your thought and turned it into a book:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/02/091102crbo_books_kolbert
I agree with you about Twitter becoming a routine: wake up, make cup of tea, tweet, wash, tweet, dress, tweet, go to where I need to be, tweet when I am there. It's so addictive it's unreal. Though I have to hang my head in shame - I actually had no idea who Nick Griffin was, so I felt totally out of place on Twitter that night! x
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