I’ve been watching Twitter for a while. I can’t get over the feeling of voyeurism. It’s kind of bizarre. I know it’s supposed to be a conversational space, but it doesn’t quite feel like that. I tend to use it mainly for an outlet for my lame humour. Not that that comes out very often.
I know I have this propensity to sit on the sidelines and watch what goes on. It’s like I can learn something, vicariously. Not necessarily participating, but seeing what people do. Learning from the things that go on around me. But not actively participating.
I’ve been trying to work it out, and I keep coming back to things that happened long long ago. I remember being fascinated by a storm when I was at school. There were dark clouds on one side of the classroom and bright, sunny sky on the other. When I told our teacher, his response was scathing with some belittling comment about water coming out of a shower head. I think I learnt then that it doesn’t pay to be openly inquisitive and fascinated by the world around you. I started keeping things to myself and not telling people when I thought something was cool because it may be oh so obvious and joy had no place in learning.
I guess I did overcome that to a certain extent or I wouldn’t be where I am today. The thing I really love about my job is encouraging students to find the joy in learning, because really, that’s the best reason for it.
I don’t think I’ve found the joy of Twitter.
The joy of blogging is getting any hits on a post. I don’t have high expectations so anything can become joyful.
I need to relearn how to share that joy.
From my limited experienc with Twitter, I don’t understand why people use it and want to collect hundres and thousands of followers. I don’t see the point in that. I have enjoyed just having a very small number of each…perhaps that increases the voyeuristic qualities but also increases the potnetial for conversation that you mention. I mean how can you have a conversation with a thousand followers? Surely it would be impossible?
Reply to this Comment
alison reply on January 11th, 2009:
I kinda get the small close groupness of it, although I tend not to participate too much. I like getting feeds from famous peeps and one or two of my favourite ‘characters’ but I wouldn’t want to be on stage like that myself.
I view some of it like newsfeeds, just keeping up to date. Not necessarily something that I want to interact with.
Reply to this Comment
http://mashable.com/2009/01/06/twitter-follow-fail/
I thought this was interesting regarding use of twitter.
It is a good keep up to date technology…and engage as and if you want to i think
Reply to this Comment
alison reply on January 13th, 2009:
That does look like a good overview *bookmarks*
Reply to this Comment