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| Technology can be corrosive to you! |
According to The Huffington Post, there are ten types of Twitter user. I was rather disappointed to read this article, in that it failed to mention the three categories of people I seem to almost exclusively interact with. These are
1) Politicians, who spend most of their time on Twitter arguing black is white to defend totally ridiculous behaviours, which their parties have rather unfortunately decided are party policy. Many of these hibernate between election campaigns, then Tweet frantically like demented gerbils the closer the election gets.
2) Activists and campaigners, who are generally highly passionate about causes they care about and get really upset at the slightest hint of dissent from their viewpoint.
3) Wind up merchants, who simply get a kick out of irritating and annoying the above two groups.
I could make a fairly good case that in some way, shape or form I belong to all three groups. But I primarily associate with group 2. Most of the people I consider "twitter friends" do as well. In the Barnet scene, I've actually met most of these over the years. It is quite interesting when you've been exchanging tweets with someone for a couple of years, then they bump into you in Tesco's in Finchley and they look nothing like you imagine. As I'm a shameless self publicist in a Rock and Roll band, who has been appearing on telly and in public most of my life in some way shape or form, most people locally have an idea what I look like. Over the past month, on three occasions, people have stopped me, said how much they enjoy the blog and then said something that has rather upset me. They have mentioned that they have stopped "doing Twitter". When I asked why, I got exactly the same answer from all three. "It was starting to get too stressful, I was unable to go to bed without checking twitter and sometimes was sitting up to 3am arguing with people and getting very upset".
Interestingly, two of the people cited the same major source of this stress as a single maicious tweeter. I was quite stunned by this. I had easily identified the said individual as an unprincipled wind up merchant and a bully. Generally they leave me alone, I suspect that it is because they know it isn't particularly worth the effort in my case.
I have had mental health issues in the past. When I was in my early teens I was clinically depressed and was put on medication at age 13. This was a culmination of several things, being dyslexic and underperforming at school. As a result of being an August birth (six weeks premature), I was one of the smallest children in my school year and I was being bullied by both older children and some teachers. I hadn't yet discovered the resilience to fight back. My mother had cancer when I was eight and we had a period of two or three years, where we thought she was going to die. Seeing my Father, who was a very strong ex RAF officer crying disturbed me. I had constructed a fantasy world, in which I lived and I had no wish to come out of it. In 1975, my mother was given the all clear. When I was 14 in 1976 I discovered punk rock music and found myself. I started to grow and so the bullying stopped. I started to argue back with teachers. I realised that being beaten with a cane was less painful than being humiliated. That was an important lesson, one I've never forgotten. I understand what it is like to feel stress, to feel fear and loathing at having to be in a position where you are going to get torn apart. Why would you want to do that?
What shocked me was that this same fear and stress seems to be triggered by the simple act of logging on to Twitter. At first I struggled to understand how the blatherings of strangers could possibly cause such anguish. When I thought about it, it became apparent that in many ways it is the same thing. The thing that used to really hurt me when I was 13 wasn't people kicking or punching me. It was the humiliation in front of the world, the belittling. It is the thought that you are just trying to the right thing, make people aware of important things in your community and someone comes in and kicks seven shades of literary $hite out of you, mercilessly winkling out your weaknesses and then, having located your achilles heel, ripped you apart. You feel that all of the people who you thought liked and respected you, now realise you are an imbecile. The fact that this world is unseen, the "friends" are simply people you largely don't know on the other end of an IP Address is irrelevent. Put on top of that the disruption to the sleep patterns, the interruption to work as you frantically check your twitter feed to see the next humiliation. You see it, you don't want to respond, but you can't bear the thought of letting the bully put the boot in unchallenged, so you ping another message and wait with that ever sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach.
One of the questions I get is whether it ever gets me down. The honest answer is that when I first got into Twitter, I did have a few occasions when it was becoming a pain in the bum, but I soon learned that it is not worth having lengthy debates with people who are simply trying to wind you up, unless you are actually enjoying it. I also learned to limit my time on social media and not to look at it when I am not supposed to be (according to my self imposed schedule). I never look at it at work (apart from our business account, which we use to promote the firm).
My advice to anyone who is using Twitter is quite simple. If people are trolling you, block them. If Twitter is makingyou feel unhappy, take a break from it for a week. If your life is better, knock it on the head. Never look at Twitter for an hour before you go to bed, no matter how strong the temptation. Have a long, hard look at how you are using it and make sure it is working for you, not destroying you.
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