That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
A couple of days ago, I signed up to Twitter.
Since I’ve come to University, I’ve been trying to do something new every week. This week, after reading so many election liveblogs where information was being received and exchanged over twitter, I thought I’d give it a go. After all, it’s just like updating your Facebook status right?
I’ll admit, I had my apprehensions: the most concerning of these was that I’d get really addicted to it. I didn’t want to have more reasons to spend all my days online: Facebook has been bad enough for my daily dose of vitamin D and my degree work.
But I went ahead anyway – I saw fellow Yorker blogger Roxy (Roxysblog) was on it, and decided to give it a go!
It was easy to sign up, just enter a few details, try and find a name no one else has got – funnily enough “GirlFromDerwent” was free, and then off you go. You’re going to have no one reading your messages, but you can “tweet” as much as you like.
The next step is to get your words out there. However stupid, however mundane, there is always going to be someone who will read what you write – but you have to make the first move.
You do this, by “following” people. Yes, I know, it made me think of stalking too. And it can get a bit addictive – before I realised what I was doing, I was “following” a large number of people I didn’t actually know. This got a little bit out of hand, and it was only when I decided to “follow” David Miliband, Nick Clegg and David Cameron, did I realise that this was probably a bit much for my first day of twittering. I hadn’t even really “tweeted” yet.
But there was a thrill. This was ambition at its height – how many random people could I “meet” over Twitter? How many “famous” people could I “follow”? This was truly breaking down the divide between “us” and “them”. Facebook is good, but nothing quite beats Twitter for banishment of social divides. If you ever go on such a spree of “following” people on Twitter, you will never quite feel that sense of ultimate opportunity.
But then again, it’s also an absolute form of voyeurism. In some cases, of course, Twitter is used to spread news. It’s used to debate issues and connect with people you may not normally connect with – I saw “Dannythefink” (aka Daniel Finkelstein from The Times) debate tuition fees with a random tweeter. But for others, you really are just reading their random thoughts. You’re reading their lives. And, I can imagine, the more people that “follow” them, the more of their lives they will pour onto the web.
I was surprised at how soon the honeymoon period was over.
At first it was fun seeing what campus “celebrities” were writing.
Then it was fun seeing what actual “celebrities” were talking about.
Then it just felt a little bit creepy.
We get bombarded with so much technology these days; do we really need any more? I had resisted for so long, but had always thought it would be kind of cool to make myself someone “known” on Twitter. Now I’ve decided it is far too much effort, and while it would be awesome to catch the Twitter-eye of someone famous and have them “follow” me, I’m thinking now that I’d rather spend less time tweeting my thoughts and more time thinking them.
Nonetheless, I reckon I’ll give it a bit more of a chance.
I’ve got 11 followers of my own in the two days I’ve been online. I guess that’s not that bad.
But let’s do a little experiment. I’ll keep the twitter account online for a few weeks – until the end of term maybe – and I will see how many followers I can get.
After all, it is fairly amusing to see David Miliband make a typo.
Guess Twitter proves we’re all the same after all.
Not a bad article. Small pedant point: the noun ("Twitter") is capitalised, the verb ("to tweet") is not. Likewise with Facebook (3rd paragraph).
hmm, looks like you're using your Twitter like Facebook, poor etiquette! Twitter should be written in the first person.
For me, the concept of using Twitter to tell people what I'm doing always seemed pointless; I'm not vain enough to think people care that much (hence I reject anyone attempting to follow me). But it's really useful to follow websites so every time they publish an article you can see it all in one place. I also like to follow the occasional celebrity who I really like, tweeting about what they've done and how they feel. But I still follow less than 20 people/websites, so it's manageable enough and not too addictive.
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