the inherent myth of social media

Our relationship with Celebrity is beginning to change, and not before time. I think we have been caught up in the nonsense of media induced insanity since the early part of the last century and only now can we begin to see the humanity behind idolisation.

My reasoning behind this train of thought comes from Twitter. Though the platform's strength comes from its social interaction, its popularity came about through the power of celebrity.

I follow all sorts of 'famous' people as long as they fall into the interesting category. There are all sorts of talented and humorous individuals who become intensely dull as soon as they try to fill 140 characters, likewise there are 'celebs', whom I have no general personal interest in, suddenly popping up with cool links or interesting tweets.

Then I have begun to notice that the boundaries are changing. I fired off a tweet to Trent Reznor the other day as a response to something he had written. I did this instinctively as part of a conversational aside and would never have done this in any other medium. I am not the kind of fan-letter sender, or autograph hunter and I wonder what makes it OK for me to engage a complete stranger in conversation? I suppose the answer to that lies in the nature of Twitter itself; a social interaction, which encourages and rewards communication across all barriers. The fact that Trent is 'celeb' is neither here nor there, if he's on - then he's open to communication.

This is not a response or reflection of the whole 'eric/fred'/insult/praise kind of scandal. As that is just grist for the mill, the kind of wonderful extra tang that celeb tweeters bring about. Trent writes "What fucking rock did you crawl out from under @Fredgarrett? Jesus Christ this place is filled with assholes." and though that bit was stripped out of context I still don't find it insulting or alarming or objectionable. He is, after all, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. If he can't pour on scorn, then what is the world coming to. Same goes for @warrenellis, @twentymajor and the rest. I revel in their unashamedly direct discourse.

However, because he IS 'celeb', he is different. He follows the tweets of 83 people that he may be interested in or know. He is followed by 617,000 or so people in turn. I don't have to deal with the cross chatter and overawed questions of thousands of people that he does but this shows that the forms of communication are also in flux. How can you possibly follow thousands of conversations, lines of thought, activities and questions? How can you receive what must amount to hundreds of questions and responses each day without altering the method of absorbing that information? We are adjusting the lines of communication from linear to non-linear; where we used to have a conversation that began, moved around and so forth - now we have discussions splintered through time and a quick absorption of multiple lines of conversation aggregated into an overview. With this synopsis based discourse comes the danger of everyone speaking their own thoughts over one another, a series of overlapping monologues connected by contextual webbing; barely held together, save by a light string of intersecting ideas.

Here is the inherent myth of social media; ultimately it is a business tool, namely the business of seeming to communicate whilst co-opting ones own agenda.

I'm sure you'll be glad to hear (and have already worked out) that this subtle, insidious nature held within the vastly successful, and therefore monetised, Business of Twitter can easily be subverted. All you need to do is make sure you have at least one person that you can follow, that you actually know, whom you wouldn't get to speak to as much as you'd like.

That justifies everything else about Twitter in one go.