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The politics of Twitter

Written by Jennifer Jaconelli
Friday, 11 December 2009 07:30

Our emphatic presence in the ‘virtual world’ has become increasingly prominent since the birth of social networking. It is frequently used for both work and leisure and provides an ample plethora of information, entertainment and opportunity for communication.

Because of our seemingly close relationship with the Internet and networking sites, it is evident that the barriers of online and offline have merged, resulting in a difficulty to distinguish between our own reality and what occurs within cyber space. This is to be expected when the world within our laptop closely resembles that of actuality.

As is the nature with social networking, we are put in a situation where connecting with others is inevitable. It is a derivative of childhood to measure our popularity and social standing by the number of friends we have. I dare to say that a considerable proportion of people involved in social networking care a bit too much about the amount of friends or followers they have. It is, in effect, a visible measure of who likes us enough to declare to the online community that we are their friend, but it’s hard to decipher whether this holds the same meaning as the friends we have in person.

The most recent addition to the social networking family, Twitter, has brought a whole new dynamic to the pursuit of being liked. Now we have to compete with the untouchables. Celebrities, academics, they’re all on there. These individuals, regal with popularity, often have thousands of followers, but only follow a select few themselves. That right there is the definition of popularity on Twitter – the fact that you can obtain a zestful army of followers without reciprocation. For those of us who aren’t famous, how do we acquire followers? There are endless sites and blog posts dedicated to giving tips on how to increase your following on Twitter, including precious pearls of wisdom such as ‘follow anyone and everyone’, ‘ask people to follow you’ and my personal favourite ‘don’t reply to nobodies’. If you’re sat reading a helpers guide on how to get people to like you, have you really earnt the luxury of being picky? After all, beggars can’t be choosers.

I’ve witnessed various under-the-surface politics concerning friendship within social networking. There have been people who I’ve followed and have then unfollowed after a certain amount of time due to the fact that they haven’t followed me back, only for them to start following me. This demonstrates the complicated power struggle involved in the quest for esteem on sites such as Twitter. It seems silly that we’d even notice who is and isn’t following us. You’ve never met these people, yet self-validation is achieved much more readily when you have a notification saying someone has subscribed to your daily statuses than if your friends ask you to socialise in a way that doesn’t depend upon the creation of an astutely sharp 140 character statement.

When someone ceases their commitment by pressing the oh-so-spiteful ‘unfollow’ button, one’s self-worth can be left hanging by a thread. Various reports have stated that being de-friended online is actually a worse experience than it happening in real life. A service named ‘Qwitter’ has been created to provide Tweeters information on who stops following them and after which status update. If friendships on social networks were mirroring those held in reality, I’d be disturbed. It would be beyond exhausting having to keep stringent tabs on each twenty word stint you ever uttered, in fear that your friends would abort all contact with you.

I am hopeful that social networking bears little resemblance to the friendships we have away from our computers. When online, we are able to create a persona that may not necessarily be reflective of the truth. I think that to a level, the obtaining of followers on sites such as Twitter resides around the simple process of positive reinforcement.  We've been conditioned to associate the addition of a friend or follower as a validation that we’re ok and have the ability to be loved. It doesn’t seem to be a fair measure of popularity if you’re begging the masses to follow you and then alienating those who don’t cut it on the networking social scale. Friendships online are fine and can be abundantly beneficial, but as much as our time may be increasingly spent online, there should be a rigid distinction between laptop and life.

If you like what you’ve read, let’s be friends: twitter.com/imaniizzi