June 26, 2010

• The Decharacterization of Twitter

  I have a friend who is seemingly on the forefront of fashion, trends, and everything else that is (or will be) cool.  Meaning, if she discovers a new club or lounge in Hollywood, it will surely be the most popular nightclub in a few weeks.  If she’s listening to Iglu & Hartly in May, everyone will be listening to them in September.  She is so advanced that she introduced me to music from the Blue Scholars before most people knew that people lived in the Pacific Northwest.  So, three years ago when she instant messaged me and told me to join a new social networking website, I didn’t hesitate to sign up.  She described this site as “the next huge thing on the internet.”  After joining the site, I was not particularly overwhelmed.  Actually, I was kind of pissed off.  There were no pictures and nothing substantial to read.  Absolutely no one I knew (other than my friend) was on this site, and the few people that were on the site posted unimportant and useless information like “I’m going to take a bath.”  I saw absolutely no redeeming qualities with this website.  I asked myself, “What the fuck is this site good for?” and I immediately deleted my account.

  Since then, that site has become the hugest thing on the internet.

  Shamelessly, I jumped (back) on the bandwagon a little over six months ago and I am now, once again, an active member of Twitter (@manilajones).  I suppose I now understand how to use Twitter.  Clearly, it’s a service that lets people tell friends and strangers what they’re doing and/or what they’re thinking about.  I suspect that most people on Twitter utilize the service to stay current with people they find fascinating (in my case, BPGlobalPR and Tom Leykis).  But who are these fascinating people that everyone seems to gravitate to?

  From my observation, you can divide hardcore Twitter enthusiasts (people with lots of followers) into two groups of people:  Famous people and non-famous people.  Obviously, famous people will have lots of followers because they are genuinely famous (rock stars, politicians, thespians, priests, etc.).  There is nothing that they can do about the magnitude of their following.  While the famous people like to use Twitter as a public relations tool to promote their next movie, album, public appearance, etc., they mostly use it talk about the trivialities of their lives.  They use Twitter to convey to the public that they do regular things, like eat lunch at Tito’s Tacos, walk their dogs at Venice Beach, and make uninspired statements about philosophy.  Even though their tweets are absurdly boring, they’re absolutely riveting to their fans.  They use Twitter to prove that they’re normal.  They want to be non-famous, even though they’re not.

  Now, you may have come across a Twitter profile with over 5,000 followers of someone you’ve never heard of and asked yourself why this person was popular.  This person was likely “non-famous.”  They have no fame outside of the Twitterverse (or other internet vectors that allows for status updates).  Non-famous people have a lot of followers because they actively seek to gain followers.  These “Twitterlebrities” are dorks who spend all day trying to formulate witty one-liners that only they think are clever.  (As opposed to bloggers, who seemingly spend their existence searching for epiphanies and transcribing them into copious amounts of text.)  They want to be famous, even though they are not.

  While I’m still asking myself, “What the fuck is this site good for?” it is not in the same pompous manner that I did a few years ago.  I’m genuinely searching for Twitter’s fundamental redeeming quality.  Ultimately, it may be that people (famous and non-famous) do not use Twitter to be themselves inasmuch as they use it to recreate themselves.  Whether you’re a famous person trying to break out of character, or a non-famous person trying to create a character, we’re going to figure this damn Twitter thing out.

  And we’ll do it 140 characters at a time.

  • 9:44 am
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