Addicts of the Modern Age part 2: The Retweeting

A while ago, I wrote a blog about how I became addicted to the information age, and I resolved to make some changes. I have since shut down my Twitter updates and only occasionally check my Facebook page.

It’s a start.

However, I now feel compelled to defend Twitter and the instant-information age a little more. There are problems, as any new technology is wont to have. Inevitably, Twitter has seen its fair share of faux pas, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger posting a clip of him wielding a knife whilst discussing budget cuts, to a man potentially losing the job he had just obtained thanks to some indiscrete tweeting http://bit.ly/Q5MNo . Any sane person must also acknowledge the fact that Facebook and Twitter can be very invasive. We sometimes know too much about people and we tell others more than we should, occasionally for the worse; this is mostly down to the fact that the medium in which we communicate alters our sense of what is private.

However, making faux pas or sending out information we shouldn’t have has been around long before the age of the email and the internet. To err is human and, to paraphrase the NRA’s infamous slogan: “Twitter doesn’t fuck up – people fuck up.”

At any rate, I believe Twitter to be one of the most fascinating recent developments in information communication. In fact, you could say I am a little in love with it. Obviously not everyone shares that view, so if you are not a fan, cease and desist: you won’t much like the rest of this article.

Anyway, as is the case with most of my stories, it begins with, “So, I was getting plastered with my friends…”

So, I was looking forward to getting plastered with my friends, enjoying a nice evening of alcohol and board games (I’m middle class). The aim was to drink and be merry, or at least drink and eat some awesome chilli. I cannot remember how it began, but Twitter and its purpose came up.

Now, as mentioned before, I admit that I have some issues with Twitter (oh, blog-reading-people, how many times have I used it as a place to moan about my life, without thinking about who was reading it or whether they would care? Yes, I am aware you may be reading this thinking the same thing, but shut up, that’s why). However, I see it as a useful tool for everyday, modern life, and I was discussing this point of view.

One of my friends did not agree. Her main issue was: “I just don’t see the point of it!” I explained all the uses I got out of it: politics, comedy and, most recently, the events surrounding the Twitter Joke trial.

The Twitter Joke trial is something many of my friends and colleagues have not heard of. For those of you not yet familiar with the Twitter Joke trial, see here: http://tinyurl.com/36wb6bp It is, to me, a fascinating tale, detailing abuse of power by the CPS, who really should have known better. Was Paul Chambers a foolish man? Probably. Should the CPS have pursued the case when even the police, after investigation, dismissed the threat as ridiculous? I’ll go with a big “no” there.

Anyway, I used this as an example of a news story I would have been unaware of and explained it to my friend. The reply was, “But why do you need to know that?”

This, I’ll be honest, stumped me. I have very rarely asked the question, “Why do I need to know that?” To me, knowledge and facts are fascinating things and I love absorbing them. I want to know everything. I remember that my desire for reading when younger, for gathering new stories and information, was a slight cause of concern as I tore through books voraciously.

So, Twitter is a good surrogate for my information addiction. Why would I need to know all these things? To paraphrase some of my favourite characters, my beloved Tramalfadores from Slaughterhouse Five, “Why anything?”

But apart from giving me bits of news I find intriguing, what is the point of Twitter? Well, for one, it’s not just about finding new information;  Twitter can be the perfect place to expose information and trumpet freedom of speech. Take the case of the attempted silencing of The Guardian by the law firm Carter-Ruck. Using a super-injunction, Carter-Ruck (acting on behalf of their client, Trafigura, one of the world’s largest oil companies)  wanted to prevent The Guardian newspaper from reporting on any details of a question posed by Paul Farrelly MP in Parliament. You see, he had asked a question about the right to press freedom, as well as the dumping of toxic waste by Trafigura on the Ivory Coast. This sludge, by the way, caused a number of deaths.

Trafigura obviously did not want this little comment getting out. Unfortunately, a super-injunction was not something that would prevent Twitter getting a hold of the details. Soon, thousands of users had seen and spread the information. After the Twitter outbreak, Carter-Ruck and Trafigura gave up their attempts to gag The Guardian because it was just too late. Soon, Carter-Ruck became synonymous with heavy-handed tactics and cover-up scandals. The attempted silencing of a national newspaper by an oil company badly affected Trafigura’s reputation and meant they could not dodge the bad publicity for their actions. There is something deeply satisfying about watching the public hold a financially powerful company accountable.

Twitter isn’t all just exposing scandal and news, however; it can also be a powerful tool for charities and campaigns.

Thanks to tweets and retweets containing links to the Red Cross website, Haiti’s earthquake disaster victims received massive amounts of charitable donations. The Red Cross received $35 million in donations in 48 hours, with the Red Cross saying Twitter had played a “substantial” part in achieving this. Wyclef Jean, through his tweets alone, raised $1 million for the earthquake victims through his followers and their retweets. A recent charity Twitter auction also raised money for Haiti in an innovative way by getting people to bid  for a tweet/retweet from celebrities such as Jessica Alba or Simon Pegg, or to have said celebrities follow them on Twitter. On the first day I checked the bids, amounts were already in the thousands of dollars.

I suppose my point is this: yes, there are many tweets containing irrelevant and useless information, but it also does a lot of good, too. It is easy to reject out of hand a piece of technology that many use simply to stay connected, or to post photos of their pets in amusing outfits. However,  when others dismiss why I use Twitter, I can point to things like the overturning of a super-injunction thanks to a Twitter campaign, or the raising of millions of dollars in only two days for earthquake victims. Then I can say, “There. That’s why.”