A number of different people have talked to me in the last few weeks about Twitter and intimacy. I was running a workshop for civil servants at the DCMS – thanks to the introduction from @marxculture – and many worried that Twitter was too intimate: that they would sacrifice too much privacy for too little gain.
Prestolee, a new blogger, suggests that Twitter can help restore some of the social bonds and intimacy that were lost in the urbanisation and individualism of the 1980s and 1990s. Prestolee suggests two key caveats: that Twitter favours the strong and it favours the elite. In Prestolee’s experience:
Judging by the network of friends I’ve developed there’s a definite bias towards the educated professional with values of respect, liberty and justice.
I have two further hesitations about Twitter as a social networking tool – particularly one for furthering social bonds and social intimacy. Twitter is too casual for intimacy and too superficial for meaningful networking. Secondly, (and this isn’t just a fault of Twitter) it doesn’t break boundaries.
One of the strengths of Twitter is that it is unobtrusive. You Tweet, it gets read or it just sits there. It’s less intrusive than an email and certainly less so than an SMS. So when something personal comes up on Twitter, it’s frankly awkward. On a number of occasions I have been on Twitter when someone has tweeted about a death, sudden illness or other unfortunate personal event. It has always jarred. It is hugely awkward. And it’s always a public network – so the tone and nature of your response is very sensitive.
But Twitter never encourages you to reach beyond your prejudices. Prestolee hasn’t discovered the US Christian evangelicals, the homophobes, the BNP voters, the snarly , aggressive, cofrontational users. To find them, I had to look pretty hard. Twitter encourages you to hang out with your kin. It’s not alone in this fault – but it’s no social melting pot (compared with, say, talking to someone on the 38 bus).
I’ve no doubt Twitter can be put to good use. But it is not an inherent tool for good. It’s only as good as its users. The Bloggers Circle is partly a recognition that the internet can be a force for good and bad – and that for it to be good, you have to organise to make it so. That’s an ambitious aim, but I hope we’ve made a good start.