Twitterers Must Learn There’s a Lot to Be Said for Silence

By Lee Randall

ON OCCASION I’m accused of an unhealthy reverence for the sound of my own voice. Often the larynx-loosening properties of alcohol are to blame, though complainees need to know that if they keep laughing it’ll only encourage me.

Like many of my failings, I have this one inventoried and do my best to keep it in a box on a high shelf that’s really hard to reach. But it does fall out and clobber me sometimes, not to mention the trauma it inflicts on others. At least they can leave the room – I have to live with me and I’m afflicted with one of those internal voices that goes like clangers.

I’ve always chatted amongst myself. Often there’s an argument raging. When people encounter me blithering away on the street I fiddle with my shirt buttons to fool them into thinking I’m wearing one of those telephone earpieces and am at that precise moment clinching a very important business deal… With someone also named Lee… Who’s being an oaf.

Though I’ll never warrant a biographer, I do leave a trail. When I start a new book I note its title and author in my journal, where I also paste my ticket stubs so I know what I’ve seen. I scribble ideas and inspirational thoughts and, less often, occurrences. I dislike the telephone but love e-mail. And, obviously, I write for publication, often drawing on personal experience.

To this extent, a portion of my life is recorded and I feel my current level of exposure suffices. I’m blissfully happy puttering around quietly on my own and respect the distinction between solitude and loneliness.

Judging by a social phenomenon called Twitter, this ability to self-start my personality without an audience is a rarity.

There’s a legendary tale about the woman who Twittered her gynaecological examination during an earthquake. Another American woman is Twittering her labour even as I type, updating with such edge-of-the-seat entries as: “At 4cm. Epidural is in. Doing well.”

This week fans created Twitter accounts for the characters from Mad Men that were swiftly suspended by the show’s lawyers. Just as well, the tweets (hey, that’s what messages are called) were the very definition of boring. Even politicians are at it, sending regular tweets from Obama’s camp.

I’ve discovered Twitter is a social networking centre for messages of no more than 140 characters, transmitted via the internet or SMS. (Though the latter are currently no longer available in the UK, because it’s costing the company a bomb.)

Why don’t they text or e-mail? Because every tweet is shot across 20 or more social sites, that’s why. Personally, I fail to see why hundreds of people should stop whatever it is they’re doing to read messages such as (Twitter’s search function will back me up on this): “Going to dress for work now. I shall tweet you all from the office”, or “Need to eat and get ready to go to the doctor. No time to blog my run this morning.”

In Twitter’s defence, the banality lies in its users. I can see its worth when I hear that a Chinese journalist Twittered his abduction by the police and an American student Twittered from an Egyptian jail, alerting the folks back home, who secured his release.

To paraphrase Patti Smith: “All must not be communicated. Some communication we must disintegrate.” If you’re tweeting to say: “There just isn’t enough time in one day, frankly”, then it’s clear that you’ve lost the plot. Once you stop trying to commit your every waking thought to posterity, I think you’ll find it’s a lot easier to get through life’s “To do” list.

(c) 2008 Scotsman, The. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.