Last weekend, I sent my last Twitter message: "Dear Twitter - Adios. Free at last. Free at last, Great God almighty I'm free at last." Since then I've had a number of politicians come up to me and say they can't believe I actually did it. Politicians are slaves to Twitter. We're junkies for immediate news and instantaneous feedback. But as one MP confessed to me, "I feel like I'm watching graffiti in a bathroom all day." He told me his dream was to one day retire and ditch Twitter forever.
Why wait, I asked?
I have to admit I wasn't planning to sever the Twitter feed, but like any dysfunctional relationship, sometimes it just hits you that the only thing you can do is cut your losses and get the hell out. Maybe it was the inanity of the last Tweet I'd received: "I hate you asshole - and you sing terribly." Or the second last tweet from some anonymous source holding me personally accountable for the fact that NDP leader Thomas Mulcair missed an interview. Or it could have been the racist troll who wanted to pick a fight with me over the Trayvon Martin killing.
Don't get me wrong; I am a huge fan of social media. And I do have a very thick skin. But are these really the kind of "conversations" I want to participate in? Being on Twitter is like being badgered by a drunk on a 24-hour bus ride.
As politicos, we're taught to embrace all things Twitter. We're supposed to champion the Twitterverse as inherently progressive, the birthplace of the Arab Spring. One friend went so far as to predict that, thanks to the unprecedented outpouring of BlackBerry clickety-clacks, Twitter will inevitably build ideas as complex as a Dickens novel or create responses as heroic as the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. Sorry, but three monkeys typing through all eternity won't pump out Hamlet, regardless of the fact that my Grade 10 teacher said it was statistically probable (athough I'm sure the monkeys would do fine on Twitter).
Technology is not neutral. Every new information technology has the power to both giveth and taketh away from the public conversation. It is vital for people to deconstruct how technologies affect and change our interactions. The upside to Twitter is that it serves as an amazing ticker tape of information. If you follow the right folk, you can sometimes get breaking news before it hits the mainstream. That's a pretty cool thing. If you're trying to bring attention to an issue, Twitter will certainly give you the jump.
But the ease of up-to-the-second commentary has meant that Twitter has begun to undermine fact checking and verification. For example, in response to the robo-fraud scandal I posted a humorous tweet calling for "international observers" to monitor Canada's next election. The next morning I woke up to find it had been used as a serious quote in a newspaper article.
If this were the only problem with Twitter, I'd tell myself to get with the times. But more and more Twitter seems to be morphing into a bully pulpit for trolls. It is a technology that favours the flash mob. In England, the racist takeover of some Twitter feeds has resulted in people going to jail. The digital mob is no different from a street mob. It can be excitable, good-natured or vicious, but don't ever mistake the mob for a democracy.
My insight into the dark side of the Twitter mob came during the Attawapiskat housing crisis of 2011. Thanks to an article in The Huffington Post Canada, the horrific conditions in Attawapiskat First Nation went viral around the world. Twitter played a role in raising awareness about the crisis. But it also gave a platform to a whole swath of angry white people. I will always remember the woman who tweeted that she hoped the people of Attawapiskat would "freeze to death" or the guy who sent me a tweet on Christmas Eve telling me to "eat shit."
Sure, other technologies have been used to transmit hate. But if these anonymous tweeters had called my house to deliver the same message, I'd consider it a crank call, maybe even worthy of a call to the cops. If they sent me a hate letter, I'd give them credit for taking the time to put ugly thoughts to pen and lick the stamp. These traditional forms of communication at least took effort. But Twitter is about instant gratification. There's no self-reflection and no way to apply the breaks. Tossing a hate bomb is the easiest thing in the world when you have a Twitter account with a fake name. It's a technology tailor made for the knee jerk reaction.
To be fair, during the Attawapiskat crisis, the positive messages greatly outpaced the hate mail. But one tweet really stood out. At the height of the crisis multinational giant General Electric tweeted their concerns about the horrific conditions in Attawapiskat. At the time, we hadn't been able to get a single aid agency or government official willing to help the people in crisis. And here was GE, the oil and gas giant that owns Universal, Comcast, NBC, taking a stand on Twitter.
Foolish me, I thought this would be a game changer. When my staff finally tracked down the thumbs behind the tweet, they were polite but very confused. Yes, they did tweet about Attawapiskat, but they were really at a loss as to why I expected them to get involved. I never heard from them again.
GE, a multinational powerhouse, had tweeted their concern; wasn't that enough? No it's not. Corporate responsibility can't be done in 140 characters. I had tracked down the sixth largest corporation in America and found that they were engaged in the same level of slacktivism as somebody sitting on a couch with a smart phone and a couple of bottles of beer. Talk about dumbing down. At the very least, it was a helpful reminder that real change still comes down to people being willing to step up to the plate and get involved.
So for those who love Twitter -- great, keep it up. Fight the good fight to reclaim the digital space from the morons and the haters.
As for me, I'm going back to the world of real people with real names who speak in sentences longer than 140 characters. Does this mean that I'm cutting myself off from the public? Hardly. I can barely keep up to those who contact me by phone, email, Facebook and old-fashioned mail.
Being free of the Twitter feed feels like I have gotten a small part of my life back.
If that means I'm no longer trending on Twitter, c'est la vie.
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Long before most news stories hits the TV news, the newspaper, etc... I've already read about it.
If you're a news junkie, Twitter is for you!
Of course, there are different types on Twitter. Just block them, it takes 2 seconds. If they have no audience, they get bored and go away.
Like the stock market, the Twitter-verse is a self-correcting machine. Trolls eventually get hammered down to where they belong, thin-skinned people become stronger, others become better communicators over time and solid reporters (whether they are from professional news agencies, or not) begin to get the respect they deserve.
For established journalists - thanks for posting your articles on Twitter, it helps us to find your latest article (wherever it may be published) instantly.
As for politician's who use Twitter. It's their option, of course. Nathan Cullen's team certainly made good use of it during the recent leadership campaign.
Cheers! @JBSCanada
Your comment regarding established journalists I'd expand on to include journalists of alternate media as well as citizen journalists. Counter-narratives and on the ground fact gathering are crucial if we want to maintain an open information economy rather than one of a closed propagandistic nature.
I think FB and Twitter are the ultimate in narcissism and that it's touching but also sad that people are so eager to 'connect' however they can with others that they allow constant intrusion in their own lives.
I'm left wondering how empty are the lives of people who must fill up their time following others' lives...
/Life in a big orange bubble.
Many politicians don't use social media properly and it leads to issues for both them and their constituents. I'd love the opportunity to teach them (even the ones I don't like) a few things.
It is your right to quit Twitter - and good for you for making a stand - but the rest of us lost a "good guy" which means that the negative Twitter-voices increase their firepower by one.
Just think if every "good guy" stockbroker on Wall St. quit in disgust - who would we have left? Same for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, or in the corporate boardrooms across North America?
Who would we be left with? Non "good-guys" - that's who.
Is that the kind of world you have been working for your whole life? I think not.
So take a break from it by all means, you've earned it - but come back to us soon and just block anyone that is annoying to you.
On a general note to the community of Twitter users. In every community there exists some level of responsibility and self-regulation, the "good-guys" are still the majority, let's keep it that way. Block like crazy - AFTER jumping on a known troll and giving them a piece of your best thinking on a particular matter. Wear them down by sheer force of numbers!
If we don't practice self-correction, Twitter will become a community of trolls comparable to the worst days of CB radio.
@JBSCanada
Twitter has another problem too - misinterpreting the motives behind a tweet. One has to ask simple questions since the writer is limited to 140 characters so that tweet or a reply tweet might be seen as condescending - which means that tweeters can alienate each other when no harm was intended.
Certainly twitter is addicting but on the other hand - it's also brings community to people with a common interest and that's so necessary since people in Canada live in isolated rural communities - it's also a powerful support system when making political change.
A PC political aide had to retire last week in Alberta because she showed the party's true stripes in a nasty tweet.
It was sweet.
The rate at which misinformation is disseminated on the Internet, particularly on Twitter is well matched by the rate at which corrections and facts are immediately released to counter that misinformation. This is quite unlike what appears in mainstream media wherein corrections, retractions or additional facts regarding a front page story may or may not be forthcoming and if they are forthcoming they appear in a small box on page 15 that is usually overlooked.
If one wants to improve the atmosphere of the Internet thoughtful engagement and intelligent discourse is the only way to raise that bar. If those who can provide this all shy away then we are left with trolls and those who battle them.
This means we're stuck with the likes of @thebrazman, @toewsvic, @TonyclementCPC, @kenneyjason and @pmharper on Twitter. It's been clearly demonstrated that it is nearly impossible to troll these guys hard enough to get them to leave the Internet.
That's why they are going to have their way with it much to the detriment of the Canadian population. It's becoming an attrition based game. And they've just scored. At least @PatMartinMP is still on the ice.
Thanks anyways Mr. Angus. I hope you recover soon from your Twitter bashing and the disappointment that entailed. I'd never have heard of you or the Attawapiskat crisis if you hadn't been on Twitter. Wouldn't have signed petitions or sent emails to Ottawa on the topic either. Nor would a lot of others.
Sure politics requires a thick skin but so does the Internet. So does real life. Yet it is so much easier to deal with the annoyance of trolls on the Internet by simply blocking them as one commenter mentioned. Would sure be nice if that were possible in real life--no more getting cut off in traffic or being shouted at by someone in a waiting car as one attempts to cross a busy street or being hounded by telephone calls attempting to sell fraudulent vacation properties. One has the luxury, on Twitter, and on the Internet in general, to select their own community and essentially wall out the screechingly discordant.
That one is disappointed with the lack of response by a big corporation to a social issue is rather naive, particularly for a politician in this era. They care only insofar as it makes them appear to care for PR purposes and not beyond that.
Continued...