Now, given that Twitter has been around for over a decade, you might think I'm coming a little late to the party, and you'd be absolutely right. This is no accident. I've been purposely avoiding Twitter under the impression that it's a platform where people go to snipe about the contestants on Celebrity Love Island having cellulite, or to spread disinformation about the 'dangers' of vaccines, to showcase their hatred of Jews and Muslims, and to share the general minutiae of their everyday lives with the entire planet.
I haven't changed my opinion in this respect; I still think that Twitter is the place to go to discuss celebrity cellulite, to spread disinformation, hatred, and minutiae - but now I'm willing to admit that there is (a little) more to it than merely this.
It's not just Twitter of course: Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Weibo (etc) are also guilty. Social media as an institution is predicated on the fact that people love to make snarky comments from behind the safety of the screen. I've written previous posts about people encouraging a girl to kill herself on social media (which sadly, she did), and people are oh-so willing to criticise politicians, celebrities, and indeed anyone via the wonderful internet.
I must admit I'm not above this sort of attitude - after all, in this blog post I have made (albeit implicit) judgements about people who watch Celebrity Love Island, oppose vaccinations, and so on. It's a human compulsion to criticise, and social media is the ideal place to do it: people can be vicious without (much) recourse, and reading the comments is a sure-fire way to waste away your life. That's why I try to avoid it.
You might be surprised that someone writing a PhD about AI and future tech shuns social media, but there is no reason to think that all tech is a force for good. We shouldn't just accept tech with open arms merely because it is new or techy. (Indeed, my thesis will serve as a warning as well as an attempt at a solution to the perils of new tech.)
I've not always shunned social media: I spent ten years of my life on Facebook, and it was not time well spent. I knew it was drivel, yet I found myself scrolling through it several times a day, often shaking my head at the banality of its content, but reading it nonetheless!
I probably spent an hour a day looking at the chocolate-covered faces of the nephews of old school friends, or watching people I once met on holiday pour a bucket of ice over their head, or listening to the rants of people I didnt really consider friends, but felt social pressure to friend them on Facebook because they'd sent me a request and I sort of knew them. It took the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 to give me the push I needed to leave Facebook.
So, I deleted my account.* The following day, there were several times when I thought to myself "I'll just check Faceb-- oh, I deleted it. Ok I'll do something else." Within a couple of days, I stopped thinking about it altogether, and didn't miss it at all. Now, it's just not a part of my life any more. It's something I wasted a lot of time on, and ditching it gave me more time to devote to other things (such as my son -- not just eBay, Pinterest and TV!)
* Social media being what it is, I understand that my profile was not really deleted, at least, not by Facebook. It'll never be obliterated, short of a planetary meltdown on the scale of the extinction of the dinosaurs.
After that watershed moment (not just leaving Facebook, but leaving Facebook and not missing it at all), I resolved to stay away from social media for good. In my humble opinion, Facebook is possibly the least toxic of the social media outlets: at least it's people I know writing about things in their actual lives. On the other hand, Instagram is probably rife with duck-pout selfies and photos of people's dinners (this is my guess; I must admit I haven't checked). Snapchat is the place to go if you wish to receive unsolicited "dick pics" (again, this is my guess, not an empirical fact). And as I wrote earlier, Twitter is primarily celebrity-bashing, banal arguments, and disinformation. Weibo I'm less sure about, but it is probably filled with posts of people wholeheartedly endorsing the amazing Chinese government. In a nutshell, it seems to me that social media platforms are the means by which humans disseminate the drivel which we would tune out if someone were saying it IRL (in real life). Or it is the written (photographic) manifestation of smalltalk which is palatable in tiny doses, but causes severe nausea and brain damage when taken as a regular part of one's diet.
So why the turnaround?
If the above is my genuine opinion of social media (and it is) then why on earth have I just joined Twitter?
Well, I was convinced by my friend and fellow grad student Mo (I'm not mentioning their real name; I wouldn't want to be named on someone's blog without my knowledge, unless they were citing my awesome work, of course). Mo said that Twitter is a great place to find out about new research, to make connections with people writing about similar things, and to find out about conferences. At first I was unconvinced, but Mo made a compelling argument. Mo also said Twitter is a great place to self-publicise (although Mo noted that they hate soing this, as it sounds so arrogant and conceited).
I gave it a fair bit of thought, and decided that Mo was probably quite right - Twitter could be useful.
But how could I go on Twitter whilst avoiding the chatter about celebrity cosmetic surgery and the banal minutiae of strangers' lives? Further reflection gave me my answer, and I felt more than a little sheepish. Social media is an echo chamber: if my previous experiences were characterised by pointless trivialities, then I had only myself to blame. If my online friends had interests which I was/am so disdainful of, then why did I engage with it - and with them? I must have engaged with it, because it kept coming back!
The Plan
This time around, on Twitter, my intention is this:
1. Follow only people or organisations whose interests truly fit with my own
2. Don't engage with banality, should I happen to see it
3. Unfollow people who routinely post banality
Will it work out? We shall see. If I don't complete my PhD because I'm too busy commenting on botched nosejobs and why a score on Strictly should have been an 8 rather than a 7, then we'll know the experiment failed.
Wish me luck.
