Twitter

I think I am becoming addicted to following celebrities on Twitter. Curses! Having avoided falling for reality TV, Facebook, gossip magazines and all else, why do I now want to find out whether Philip Schofield enjoyed his Chinese takeaway last night? Why do I care what children’s toy Jonathan Ross would like to turn into a movie (Pac Man) or what Alan Davies is watching on TV (TV Burp). Why should I worry about Stephen Fry’s mobile reception in Mexico? (Gosh I hope his signal stays ok).

Heaven forbid I start adding more…

Oh dear, just done so. Basically I am thinking of my favourite panellists in QI. Jimmy Carr’s twittering looks sadly dull from the initial page – looks like it is done by his website team on his behalf. I wonder how you unfollow if you have followed rashly? Damn idle thumbs… I can apparently ‘block’ people – that sounds a bit unfriendly. I just want a button that says ‘silently sidle out this way’.

I think I may have been lulled into a false sense of security with Twitter by Stephen Fry. His twitterings come across just as he seems on TV – funny, charming and intelligent – at least he is in 140 character spaces, which is all Twitter gives you. Perhaps if it was 141 then all would go to pot and the fantasy would crumble, but I still think he would tweet with aplomb.

Ah yes – ‘tweets’. Twitter brings with it its own phrases. A ‘tweet’ is an update on Twitter. A ‘twit’ is no doubt a person like me who updates Twitter and hasn’t a clue about why they are there in the first place.

I think Twitter is best for people who are out doing interesting things and can update on the move via their mobile. The point of Twitter is that your updates answer the same one question, which is always ‘what are you doing?’ So this can make interesting reading from people out and about. However the problem for me is that Twitter and my mobile are incompatible apparently (too old, I feel), so my main answer will always be ‘sitting in my room in front of my PC’. It really doesn’t vary much from that.

I’m not quite sure I like this ‘access all hours’ form of communication. Although it is nice to think that celebrities are also having Sunday dinner and moaning about washing up like the rest of us, there is no need for me to know this. I can tweet at one of these celebrities and ask them if they enjoyed their dinner, but whether they reply or not does not make them a friend. Although I would love to say to someone ‘Stephen Fry just tweeted at me’ as that would be the pinnacle of my Twitter world, and after that I would probably activate the ‘silently sidle out this way’ button.

I think I need to think on a bit about what I want out of Twitter – light entertainment, idle curiousity, networking for the book, freelance opportunities? I might leave it for a bit until I’ve made up my mind.