A QUICK SCROLL
Whilst on a Fluid Thoughts smoke break, I found myself in a very unfamiliar situation, one which is alien for most of my peers; no internet. A series of unforeseen events led me to this peculiar predicament, and I had no escape from it. Okay to be honest there was a route to the World Wide Web, I could have asked to use one of my mates’ phones to stay in touch with the world but a person who possesses an ego of my stature doesn’t usually concern others with their own troubles. So, I soldiered on until a self-sustainable way back to the internet showed itself. My return was met with the feeling of astonishment, everything felt different just from a few days’ absence.
One of my first instincts upon my reconnection to the internet was to check my Twitter timeline to update myself with what modern society had been up to but everything was just different, yet nothing had changed. My absence had granted me the gift of a refreshed perspective. All I could see, as I was scrolling down my timeline, were opinions, extreme ones, conservative ones, ones that share similar views, ones in complete contrast to each other. I didn’t see tweets, I saw a series of thoughts by people who were determined to see to it that their opinions were being heard, and some going has far as policing strangers’ ways of life. An odd thirst trap to even things up so it’s wasn’t all bad. The funny thing is that it’s always been like this and as an opinionated know-it-all I’ve contributed my fair share to this [ and would have contributed more by the time this piece is published]. Is this the norm? How is it that most of us carry varying degrees of addiction to thrill of taking a stroll down Opinion Street?
THE CLICK [CLIQUE]
My friends who aren’t frequent users of the Twitter app or aren’t even on the damn thing usually say that it is a social network fueled with negativity and my usual rebuttal is “you follow the wrong people”.
Twitter can be a very negative space, especially if you’re not experienced in avoiding the bad apples; a huge hint is when the account has no avi or the handle has more than three numbers in it and three is borderline fuckery too. Also suit avi Twitter, ignore those guys, they think they have supreme knowledge to being a billionaire but if you want to spend your pocket money buying bricks [and not the 90’s Jay Z kind] stay on that side of Twitter. However, we should not turn a blind eye to the positivity which also co-exists with the negativity on the app. People have made business connections there, found jobs, friends, love or even missing people through the app. From personal experience it has introduced me to a different way of thought, acceptance to be specific. I have interacted with people that I wouldn’t have outside the app. It has helped me continue shedding away a homophobic state of mind I had developed all my life, it has opened my eyes to being more aware of the issues different people face, particularly women’s issues. All this stems from encountering people from different walks of life. Of course, all of this could have easily been achieved offline, but I was stuck in my own world. The circle of friends I kept or the neighbourhood I was raised in were too far detached from such experiences or these topics were not brought up because the people who go through such experiences had been victimized into silence or I was too ignorant to reach out and learn. Twitter provided me with other worldly information, annoying reoccurring buzzwords and phrases that led me and others to views that may have not been readily accessible without the app.
My usual rebuttal to my friends who reserve a negative attitude towards Twitter also has its flaws. Such as offline, you can easily get caught up in your own world online, a world where everyone echoes the same opinions as you because the mute/block button is hot. A world where anything alien is blasted away back to where it came. Curating a timeline is a tricky bit of work because the natural reflex is “oh we share similar interests and opinions * follow *”. Mutuals can turn into hired goons to defend your opinion whenever it is challenged. But being correct isn’t measured by how many people agree with you, by the retweets and likes but how well you can substantiate your thesis.
We can only do and say so much with the limited characters at our disposal, one thing is that we can choose how to use them. We can meet other characters from outside our universe and learn of other worlds.