The Anti-Social Network

So my recent suspension from Twitter had a positive knock-on effect. The rough draft of book number four is nearly finished, the house is looking clean in apprehension of the arrival of new and existing family members and I have the time to write this blog post. My suspension came about because of rather liberal use of the @reply function on Twitter. I decided the loss of the All Blacks to England was too good an opportunity to miss with regard to marketing ‘The Rugby Blanket’ to UK rugby twitter-philes. One or two of those sites re-tweeted me before I was suspended… so mission accomplished. In the end it was 48 hours of productivity that resulted. This period of cyber quiet also gave me time to think (dangerous I know).

It’s astonishing the time that people now give to their social networks on the internet whether it is Twitter, Facebook or the myriad of chat and discussion forums that people find themselves drawn to. There was a time up until very recently that I spent a lot of time browsing forums on topics that interested me. It could be said that the time spent on forums helped me refine some ideas for ‘The Rugby Blanket’ but it was also a terrible distraction. One rugby forum in particular I spent a lot of time at. The conversations almost always took a diversion from rugby and the ‘shitfights’(This  websites terminology for a thread that descended into a slanging match) were at times memorable. You get that same occurrence with a number of forums. I tried not to get drawn into all this animosity and instead chose to read thread after thread separating the wheat from the chaff.

Who’s bullying who?

It was this habit of reading threads only that often arose suspicion amongst other board members. On those rare occasions I did choose to post something I was accused of being a ‘lurker’(a disingenuous label for someone who doesn’t post much) or worse – a ‘multi’(someone who has multiple logins). If you didn’t have a high daily post count you were treated with suspicion and this is where I can make a comparison. If you were to take a discussion forum and put its members in a room face to face there would considerably more pleasantries exchanged than if someone was sat behind their online persona. Those with the high post counts in the room would likely be doing all the talking and those with the notorious badge of ‘lurker’ would simply be doing all the listening and contributing occasionally. The ‘lurker’ would become the ‘listener’. It’s that online listening I have been doing that enabled me to write a book meanwhile those who have 10,000 posts to their name could well have written a book in the same time they were venting about any and everything. Even if their average post was ten words that would amount to a 100,000-word novels worth. Crazy!

It’s this sitting behind an online username that concerns me. While Facebook/Twitter claim to change the way we communicate and by default, the way we socialize, there are instances of cyber bullying that can be extremely damaging. If those same bullies were put in front of those they taunted they would just as likely be cowering or simpering in the corner in a physical situation. While I am now a cyber-criminal (albeit a misdemeanor) I would never go out of my way to belittle or demean. Those that do are rather sad.

In any case I can now speak from experience and tell you there is actually a world out there that is free of hashtags and jpegs, post counts and ‘Likes’. You can now tell people you like things instead of clicking a blue digit on a screen. People are talking, drinking, walking and they may well be smelling the roses or something far less appealing. Go forth from your desk….do it now!

Right, time for a coffee just got to check my direct messages….

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