twitter ye not!
I know laughing at one’s own jokes isn’t a good look but for anyone old enough to remember the irascible old rogue and ‘star’ of Up Pompeii!, Frankie Howerd, that title’s just got to raise a smile.
Moving on, Twitter, revolutionary mouthpiece of the masses, has of late been credited with single-handedly causing the Arab Spring, the Iranian uprising, and the riots in our capital city and beyond. Personally, I don’t buy it. To my mind the only tweets I hear about are about some so-called celebrity getting out of a car and flashing her fanny, over-paid and over-here footballers putting it about a bit too much or Justin Bieber. Any communication channel that creates superstars out of small children biting each others’ fingers needs to take a good long look at itself.
Those tuning in are even more vacuous. Air-heads the lot of ‘us and the fact that we’re incessantly tuning in through a cornucopia of gizmos and gadgets is exactly the reason why Twitter is now the perfect new opium for the masses. If you’re at home right now reading this, finding out exactly what’s ‘trending’ and uploading your next ‘I’m having soooo much more fun that you are’ picture on FB, then you ain’t out there making a revolution. To my mind there’s quite a bit that’s going wrong out there but precious little seems to be being done about it. Even those who do get off their bottoms to protest even a little bit can’t do without their social media fix: Occupy St Pauls/Wall Street insisted on free wi-fi! We’re all too addicted to our screen and our feeds to bother breaking the law.
