Want to engage in antisocial networking? Tweet

Texting is a useful tool for communication. But do we really need the banal content of the average tweet?

Texting is a useful tool for communication. But do we really need the banal content of the average tweet?

WHEN TEXTING became all the rage, I imagined that during the fleeting moment this new fad lasted, it might help raise literacy levels among young people. hw wrng wuz i???

Some fad it turned out to be, as well. Not only has texting become integral to modern life, used by all age groups, it was the beginning of a revolution in public/private communications for which, thanks to the integration of phones, computers and cameras, we have had to redefine the term “social networking”.

Having had no desire to join with this revolution, and probably being too lazy to keep pace with the lightning speed of innovation anyway, I’ve been all but left behind. For instance, I only began texting in January. I was working away from home, and had no nightly access to a computer. So my sons decided that texting was the cheapest way of keeping me abreast of Liverpool’s moves in the transfer market. Oh how they laughed when I asked where the punctuation marks could be found.

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Still, whatever about the style of writing it tends to inspire, I can easily see the point of texting: it is a cheap one-to-one service, whose users are mostly intimates.

For the life of me, however, I can’t begin to fathom why anyone would want to constantly peruse the badly spelt banalities of total strangers, which seems to be the main appeal of the likes of Twitter.

Even more of a mystery is what motivates someone to share their most intimate secrets with groups of people on something like Facebook. I know nothing of Facebook, except what gape-mouthed subscribers sometimes tell me about the ill-advised divulgences of mutual acquaintances.

I suspect that I’m in a minority here. Apparently during December 2010, 43 million hours were spent on Facebook by UK mobile phone owners.

I have some experience of Twitter. My younger son signed me up a few weeks ago, so that I could follow the summer’s football transfer rumours for myself. I never had any intention of actually sending a tweet, and quickly tired of those who do.

There is only so often that a footballer can announce he’s “lookin frwrd to tmrrws game”, or a celebrity shares with you the details of his breakfast, “jst had cofee an tost”, before you’re sorely tempted to tweet back “Who cares?”

Except, and here’s the rub, if the many thousands of followers that high-profile figures attract are anything to go by, people do care – an awful lot. And not only about the daily minutiae of the lives of the famous, but about the equally mundane everyday doings of us ordinary mortals as well.

A far more unappealing aspect of Twitter, and something that won’t surprise anyone who has ever visited an interactive forum or, for that matter, has ever had an opinion piece carried in this newspaper’s online “Have Your Say” section, is how readily people become angry with someone who doesn’t hold similar views to themselves. Not just angry, but downright nasty and abusive. A different opinion is seized upon as a personal insult, and the holder of it treated accordingly.

While it does no harm for us columnists to be on the receiving end occasionally, this hair-trigger nastiness does serve to remind that good manners and tolerance are often little more than skin-deep social conventions, which are readily dumped if a measure of anonymity can be assured (or imagined).

It is a reminder, too, of why newspapers and magazines long ago decided to request the names and contact details of contributors to their letters pages.

The freedom that anonymity confers would seem a perfectly rational explanation for the intolerance in cyberspace – except the theory doesn’t always hold true. Not all angry people on the web hide behind a pseudonym. If you aren’t famous, there isn’t that much risk in using your own name while letting yourself down a bucketful in cyberspace. (“Sure there must be hundreds of people with the same name as me!”)

But risk of ridicule – at the very least – seems not to be a consideration even for those who are famous. As only a few examples: George Michael reacted badly on Twitter recently to inane comments by Jeremy Clarkson, Stephen Fry has thrown more than his share of hissy fits, and Piers Morgan (who surprisingly is a very entertaining tweeter) has attracted the ire of numerous celebrities and sportspeople.

How can people become so animated over idle chit-chat on a computer screen? How totally detached from reality must a celebrity or anyone else be to forget that his or her unguarded comments or revelations are potentially available to millions?

Speaking of detached, have you ever tried to start a conversation with a smartphone user while they’re using the device? It’s like trying to catch the attention of a photograph. And little wonder. According to Ofcom, the majority of smartphone users in the UK admit to being so addicted they never turn their phone off, and even use it in the bathroom.

Social networking? All things considered, perhaps “antisocial” networking would be more accurate.