When I was little, I read something in GQ. I can't remember exactly how it went but it was something along the lines of "a gentleman never argues politics or religion in public". You see, I take all my life advice from GQ. Bless those editors. They make everything so easy. Do you know how many decisions I'd have had to make for myself if GQ didn't exist? A boatload, that's how many.
I digress.
I have a twitter and it's filled with inanities. I like to keep it that way. There are lots of people that follow me that don't know me personally so I feel like they are undeserving of my opinions on sensitive issues. You'll never catch me talking about hot button issues on twitter. Never. It never ends well. Why am I bringing this up? Yesterday, a friend of mine said anyone that would rather talk about "ugwu"* and the like, but not serious issues should unfollow her. I took it a bit personally. I don't like talking about serious things. It looked like a shot at me.
You might disagree with me on this but I don't feel like twitter is an appropriate medium for intellectual discourse. To me, twitter is like one big beer parlor or bar on the internet. Sure, there are one or two serious moments but most of it is all jokes. Oh, speaking of intellectual, yesterday, some guy said anyone not interested in politics is intellectually retarded. My comments on this are for another day's blog.
My problem with twitter activism is that it never really involves any action. People batter their blackberries for 30 mins or so and then go back to living their lives like nothing happened. No effort is made to "act". I'd rather you played internet "police and tiff" with me. Look at Chude Jideonwo (sp?) and Y!Naija. I respect Chude and I think he's a great Nigerian, but his shitrag blog takes time to create fameballs. The one chance social media activists get to be a little more proactive, they spend it interviewing "twitter personalities". I don't know about you, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. None whatsofuckingever.
So yeah, if you're going to fucking do something, please do it. Don't come on twitter and start pulpitting. No one really gives a shit about your politics.
Pardon my French. I got a little annoyed at the end, but you get my point.
*The ugwu thing is some Nigerian Twitter joke.
I kinda feel thesame way.Twitter is for fun,something you do when you wanna unwind.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but agree with this post. A lot of people come on twitter to make noise for an hour or 2 and go back their private lives.
ReplyDeleteI like to think my Twitter experience is a delightful mix of serious and nonsense...
ReplyDeleteBut seriously, I started out with the nothing but fun view too, especially because I'm anonymous. I somehow thought it was unfair to burden people with my 'serious' opinions if they didn't know who I was. But I've come to regard twitter as, quite literally, my micro blog...so bit by bit more of me began to emerge. Also the level of idiocy on there sometimes...I can't always bite my tongue. I often find my most 'political' tweets are (a) things I thought were self evident..like, um, rape and sexism are bad! and (b) responses to really stupid shit people say.
I have no idea why that comment got so long. Soz.