Archive for the ‘twitter’ tag
Social Networks and the Friendship Hierarchy
In the real world friendship is a big deal. It has meaning. It has to be earned. Losing it can be devastating.
But in the detached, bloodless world of the Social Network much of that meaning is lost. It’s almost as if the same word is used to describe two states that differ profoundly.
There’s a very good reason that social networks use the term ‘friend’. Simply put, it’s good for business. It adds value to what they do. If Facebook were to suggest we “find new acquaintances” or “make new connections” they’d still be operating out of Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room. Connections work for LinkedIn, which has at its core a non-social, almost clinical networking purpose, but “Friend” is a big word, a simple, profound and potentially profitable word. It’s a critical source of Facebook’s success. But the use of the term isn’t at all convincing, and far worse, is damaging and socially corrosive. The Social Network commoditizes and verbifies friendship, appropriating its value along the way, and demeaning the very concept of friendship – which is after all part of the glue that holds humanity together.
It’s the sanitized uniformity at the core of Social Networking that is also its profound weakness. For real life friends, the social network is essentially superfluous. Real friendships don’t need the artificial landscape of Facebook. They did very nicely before it came along, for thousands of years in fact. For obscure acquaintances, and former friends one has lost touch with etc, the term “friend” invites expectations that almost certainly will not be met. The constant swirl of meaningful friendships subtly devalued by the flat-lining semantics of the social network and those meaningless ‘friendships’ overvalued by the same social network make for a rather dysfunctional, intimacy free landscape, driven by habit, marketing, and an unnatural distortion of human relationships.
In short, they are a geek’s paradise. Read the rest of this entry »
Twitter Boycott Celebrity Manifesto
whither twitter as celebrity mouthpiece
PREAMBLE
We, the people who populate Twitter, in pursuit of a more perfect and democratic social media world, believe that all twitterers are created equal. Twitter is a community, vibrant, electric, ever-changing, and not necessarily like-minded, nor in agreement about anything at all, but for one inviolable truth, that all twitterers are created equal, that the moment you add your username and password, and for the duration of your active use of Twitter, you become part of the community, or “conversation” as it is known among Tweetsters.
But as in all communities, there are those who choose to abuse the proud and ennobling rights of expression granted to them as Twitmeisters. Among those whose action we twitsters do not condone are spammers, overt marketers and proselytisers and most importantly those who take from Twitter but give nothing to its community in return.
THE STATE OF TWITTER
As Twitter has risen in cultural importance, it has attracted a group of people who often, although by no means exclusively, fall into this final category.
This group of people is known as celebrities. Celebrities come from many walks of life, but included among them are the following; performers of popular music, actors in feature films or television programs, leading professional sportsmen and women, popular newscasters and anchors; and politicians or other public figures. Celebrities, by definition, share one trait. They are famous, and as such create a variety of often conflicting impulses in those blessed by anonymity. These include a desire to welcome, please, serve and otherwise connect with a given celebrity on the one hand, and the desire – often borne of schadenfreude or jealousy – to tear down said celebrity.
The traits listed above, exhibited by most non-celebrities in one form or another, even those who profess disinterest in celebrity, are borne of the fact that celebrities are regarded as different, in some ways superior, by virtue of their fame. There is nothing wrong with this phenomenon in itself. It might indeed be an unavoidable, perhaps even primal human response. However, in certain fora, this form of social stratification has no place. Read the rest of this entry »