Few of us enjoy a blitzkrieg of obscene invective from perfect strangers. But that’s what happens – a lot – when you express opinions on Twitter. I don’t particularly relish that bit. But it has been a minuscule price to pay for a revolutionary phenomenon that has changed my life, and millions of others.
A lot of people who know far more than I do are pronouncing Twitter dead. Finished. Myspaced, Nokiad, Kodaked. Maybe it is. The nature of our light-footed, non-aligned, post-tribal capitalism is that the bluest of bluechips becomes tomorrow’s Friends Reunited in a flash. The intelligentsia are distancing themselves. “No one” is on it any more. The trolling was too much.
The greatest strength of Twitter – its revolutionary democratisation of discourse – is now its terminal weakness. It turns out the elite don’t like the global forum. Just as on fifth-century BC Pnyx Cleon’s booming voice proved too much for his more cerebral adversaries, driving many in the Athenian elite to give up on democracy, so on Twitter the elite are getting shoved, shouted down and insulted by the mob. But all I know as a user is that if it ceased to exist, someone would have to invent it.
Its enemies are mighty and numerous. The old press despise it because anyone can broadcast. All the money and branding in the world can’t buy you prominence in someone’s timeline. You’re just the Daily Whatever with your grand crest shoved into a thumbnail between Jill and Janet. Their opinions now equal to yours.
The powerful hate it because nobodies can tell them to shove it. I daresay no one has ever been rude to Her Majesty’s face, but within five minutes of sending a tweet, a load of trolls had given her both barrels.
Now the markets hate it because it isn’t producing the billions of revenue that it is supposed to. The numbers don’t add up, they scoff. The hundreds of millions of people who use it every day are not enough. All or some of these criticisms may well be right. But those of us who love it should remind ourselves and others why.
The scientific revolution, the political upheavals of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution were all galvanised by groups of people socialising and writing to one another. They shared information, ideas and advice. Matthew Boulton, Josiah Wedgewood, Erasmus Darwin, Benjamin Franklin and other luminaries formed one of history’s greatest social networks based in Birmingham in the late 18th century. They corresponded voraciously between themselves and to thinkers in distant Leeds, and even beyond. Twitter is in that tradition. But it is global and instant, and it is proving just as revolutionary.
Beyond the headline-grabbing ramblings of Donald Trump, the shriek of Mary Beard death threats and spittle-flecked nationalists screaming down all opposition, there is a rich exchange of ideas, the like of which has never been seen before. My world has been transformed by it. I have made firm friendships which have spilled over into the real world, taken part in political campaigns, seen distance evaporate.
I’ve joined in the search for Genghis Khan’s tomb, I’ve donated to rebuilding efforts in Nepal thanks to a young man who used his phone to stream video via Periscope. I’ve received a daily dose of Anglo-Saxon wisdom, followed archaeological digs, stayed up wishing the Blue Jays into the World Series, discovered haiku, followed disabled veterans rowing across the Atlantic, monitored solar flare activity, obsessed about North Carolina opinion polls during primary season. And I have laughed.
And laughed. And laughed. All without having to leave the neat confines of Twitter. I can boycott the incompetent, infuriating world of corporate websites with banner adds and algorithmically bizarre suggested links. I can ask a pub if there’s any space without having to waste chunks of my life filling in a contact request on their website. I can avoid the vast and confusing interior of Facebook, which absorbs lines of inquiry as the mighty forests of Germania once sucked in and destroyed Rome’s legions.
Contrary to the enduring myth, Twitter is not for telling your imaginary friends that you have an itchy toe. It is a personalised news feed. You edit and curate your own newspaper and TV channel. You massively enrich your life by bringing new and varied experts into your orbit. The Mars rover reports to me directly, the Naval Records Society sends me hitherto unpublished primary sources, the cricket score updates before my eyes, Chris Addison sends me a joke.
We used to scan a newspaper for something interesting, now I’m mildly surprised to see something on my Twitter feed that is uninteresting. Twitter invented a beautifully simple way for everyone to talk to everyone, to follow an unsigned band, learn more from the world’s best scientists, philosophers and historians, track whale migration, connect and share. My life and that of millions of others is immeasurably richer. Twitter might not work for venture capitalists. But it works for me.