Not An Expert

The 2008 presidential election is what brought me to Twitter.  It was an exciting time for folks who are activists, zealots or fans of politics and political theater.  I created an open account, dove in and started tweeting and responding to tweets about the election, following folks who were thoughtful and sometimes comedic on the subject of politics.

Post-election I began following folks people who tweeted about things I was interested in like football, technology and so on.  I consider myself fortunate in the sense that those I followed were nice, knowledgeable, passionate and entertaining. Twitter was enjoyable and was my go to social media source. As it grew it became a great source of breaking news worldwide and now at least here in America it is so common that it’s joined at the hip with traditional media formats. It’s also a bit more than social, and a bit more than news.

Twitter is now the go to place for isms, none of the good kind. Because we now live in this always on always connected world we get wind of all those things that were backroom whispered things or things that may not have even been spoken at all. Isms are now tweeted, re-tweeted then amplified through other media. Now let’s be clear Twitter was never to my knowledge tame, what I am saying is that it’s reached an all new level of nastiness and that’s disappointing.

There is no “putting the genie back in the bottle”. I expect Twitter to continue to change and as that happens I will continue to adapt to it. My own ism, Optimism has me believing that the format is still good at disseminating information and getting people talking. That same optimism has me hoping that when we tweet we can do so without the negative isms.

I’d like to hear from you. Are you a Twitter user? How do you use it? Is the experience enjoyable? Let me know in the comments, on Google+ or Twitter.

Photos: MsThorns