Why I'm a Twitter Quitter
Duncan Barkes is getting a bit fed up with the way some people use Twitter.
14 Aug 2011, 09:07
Getting bored with Twitter
When I left Liverpool I kept my Twitter account ticking over. Upon arriving at national radio station talkSPORT to present their overnight current affairs phone-in, it came into its own once again.
Truckers, nurses, cabbies and insomniacs all became Twitter users and it started to play a major role in my shows. However, it also caused problems with some listeners complaining that they'd rather hear real people on air having a conversation instead of me just reading out Tweets. I think they had a point. My recent work at LBC also features Twitter, but at LBC it is used in the mix as opposed to dominating the output and rightly so.
Over the last few months I have noticed that Twitter has started to become a parody of itself. It has become populated with the usual suspects, many of whom have very solid views but lack the ability to debate. They simply preach - they are like the modern day version of the pub bore and heaven forbid you should question their views.
Twitter's nasty side is growing, it has become the online version of the baying mob. Articulate a view that is deemed 'offensive' or 'controversial' by other users (many of whom hide behind pseudonyms) and be prepared to face a tsunami of vile abuse. Just look at the response to Jan Moir's piece following the death of Stephen Gately. The use of her language was certainly questionable, but once Twitter got involved the whole incident became an out of control thundering juggernaut with little rationality and certainly no room for debate.
The tedium of Twitter is growing too. I found myself questioning whether or not what I was tweeting was really of any interest to anybody. I was also reading other tweets that were the online equivalent of a teenager's diary.
There are two female Conservative MPs I used to follow on Twitter. Esther McVey, MP for Wirral West, uses Twitter magnificently to talk about her constituency work and raise awareness of stuff going on in her patch. Louise Mensch on the other hand seems to use Twitter for entirely different reasons that I would wager are starting to do her more harm than good.
Whether or not it's her spat with Piers Morgan or ironically trying to ariculate in 140 characters why she supports shutting down Twitter when there's a riot going on, she seems to me to be morphing into some kind of online zealot. The last straw for me was a tweet from her about what she might wear for a TV interview.
Sure, Twitter has its good sides. The Arab Spring would not have happened without it and it played a significant part in the clean up of London following the riots. But for me, the frustrating, tedious and nasty parts have started to outweigh all the good stuff. Each to their own and all that, but for me it was a fun experiment that has lost its magic. Instead I am going to use my time to do something rather radical when it comes to communicating with people - I am going to start having more conversations.
Comments (11)
Subscribe to this posts's comments feed
I 100% agree with this and got into Twitter for the same reason (almost). I used it for the radio.
Not to increase listeners - but to increase the relationship I had with listeners who heard me at 6am in the morning and then found it amusing that I would pop up at 6pm too. Only radio thinks you can create brands out of individuals by being in the shop window 3 hours a day!
I decided to give more.
As time wore on I followed councils, regional development agaencies, and the odd celeb, mostly with the view to watching themselves trip up, which they frequently did with staggering ease. (I recall One North East tweeting a press release about building a wig wam with £45k of their (our) money to create one job in Northumberland. Ridiculous deluisonary PR)
I've found the last couple of months tiresome too. Duncan is right. People who can't get PR airtime, bandwagon-jump and RT other people's stuff out of context to make themselves the story or avalanches. Would Russell Brand, Andy Gray and the like still be hired in their original roles if it weren't for the online community taking over the Daily Mail's job of making a storm out of a relative nothing?
14/08/2011 11:00Sure, it's the world we live in and if you don't like it, don't play. I get that.
And I'm just about hanging on to my Twitter account.
I often said that as I soon as I have nothing to sell, I'm off the Twitter and Facebook for good, but the other side of that is that we've always got stuff to sell, and unbelievably the relationship that I have with my most loyal followers is brilliant. Loyal, and I dare to say it, full of friendship.
They have chosen to follow me and I am honoured that someone wants my company in that amount.
The problem of course comes when your timeline wanders into the land of the ignoramus (riots, a very good example)or your tweets come back to haunt you (Joey Barton) or the "public" think you are fair game (becuase you have an element of fame).
At this point I am unclear in my head if a major news corporation pulling reaction from Twitter (Winehouse's death)is the height of Saturday afternoon empty newsroom lazyness or the finger on the pulse of the common man reacting instantly in a community where citizen journalism has a place.
Clearly,it's both.
The 140 character limit is both the usp for twitter .. and the problem. Duncan states "many of whom have very solid views but lack the ability to debate". Debating in 140 is very difficult. Comments become curt. It escalates. Before you know it, a sensible debate between two sensible people becomes a slagging match as it is easier to say "f*/k off you t#*/er" than rationally debate in 140 characters.
14/08/2011 11:31I never got round to Twitter - I just couldn't get my head around the 140 character limit. In my general experience, (although not an absolute rule) anything that can be said, or is said, within 140 characters, lacks any kind of depth of insight.
The world is full of opinions - everybody has one: The trick is in adjusting the signal-to-noise ratio
14/08/2011 12:37Twitter is not unlike being on a bus. Some really nice people will come up and say hello, there are some nutters you avoid and there are bigots who are a total pain in the bum. But it can be a brilliant way, if you follow the right people, of receiving some very interesting information. Chris Blackhurst got me interested in it all just over a year ago. He convinced me that it wasn't all just trivial bollocks of the Fry variety.
14/08/2011 13:22Jerry...love the "trivial bollocks of the Fry variety".
14/08/2011 15:46Classic.
Of course, we have yet to cross that watershed moment when a journo takes a Twitter story as fact and broadcasts it. There, was for example, a lot of jockeying position in Manchester re riots...GMP "All quiet" Tweeters "There's a riot"
Look forward to that.
I suppose it depends upon how you use it and who you follow
It is like a large and busy pub, a lot of conversations, some of them complete twaddle
But you can always settle down in the snug and have a chin wag with the people you enjoy
In short choppy sentences of course
14/08/2011 18:52Thanks for the comments so far. I was initially attracted to Twitter based on the 'pub' and 'bus' examples but I have noticed that over the last few months its passengers and drinkers are becoming quite an unpleasant or tedious bunch.
48 hours in from deleting my account and I feel liberated with no regrets. I imagine this is what it might be like coming off smack...
14/08/2011 21:41Jan Moir's article was published in November 2009, almost two years ago and smack in the middle of your "twitter was great back in the day" period.
Maybe not the best example to use of how it's all gone wrong?
14/08/2011 23:57Primly - I gave Jan Moir as a better known, extreme example but my comments still stand if you look at the Twitter storm that occurred after pieces written by Laurie Penny or the recent interview by David Starkey.
Regardless of your political or moral viewpoints, the baying Twitter mob went for both of them.
And I'm curious as to your name? Why not post or blog under your real name as opposed to something made-up?
Hiding behind a keyboard seems to cause some folk to be impolite or aggressive...another point I made about the increasingly negative place that is 'Twitter'.
15/08/2011 10:21I'd say that Twit-tits are no more reason for giving up Twitter than Pub-bores are for giving up pubs.
One of the nice things about Twitter is that you can choose your company.
@Duncan
If this is blogger Primly Stable, then there can be any number of reasons.
IMO the problem is not anonymity, but dishonest use of anonymity.
Perhaps Primly works for a public sector setup, and started in the days two or three years ago when they sacked people for blogging about work.
16/08/2011 12:32Bye then, take care!
20/08/2011 19:02