Twitterville

Written bySebastian Strakowicz. 4 comments

Sebastian Strakowicz

Sebastian Strakowicz works in media and has recently completed an MA in mobile and cinema studies, now published as Being Mobile.

Twitterville - a place where our deepest, unconscious and intimate desires are shared amongst ourselves.

Lately, our tech­noso­cial omnipres­ence has started occu­py­ing yet another neigh­bor­hood — Twit­ter­ville. Unlike TV, radio, cin­ema or web­sites, built by a selected few, Twit­ter is a far more vibrant space, dra­mat­i­cally grow­ing in con­trib­u­tors and con­stantly expand­ing its con­tent. In the­ory designed for imme­di­acy and con­nec­tiv­ity, in prac­tice often built on a pre deter­mined ‘look-​​at-​​me-​​ness’, Twit­ter per­son­i­fies a demand for atten­tion we’ve been con­di­tioned to embrace by that voyeuris­tic Mecca, Hollywood.

As tra­di­tional audi­ences, the (expen­sive and often dif­fi­cult to use) media tech­nolo­gies nar­rated sto­ries on our behalf. These sto­ries were made for us but not nec­es­sar­ily about us: look at the ‘white­ness’ of Aus­tralian TV until real­ity TV exposed non-​​white folks onto our screens.

But Twit­ter­ville is made by and about us. We have the lux­ury, and a respon­si­bil­ity, to be iden­ti­fied for who we are/​want to be, not for what oth­ers (TV per­son­al­i­ties, cin­e­matic char­ac­ters, comic book heroes etc) want us to iden­tify with. Unlike Hol­ly­wood, where the audi­ence (as though it is a sin­gle being) gazes at the desired ‘stars’ on the exclu­sive screen, Twit­ter­ville gives us the oppor­tu­nity to exchange the gaze and rec­og­nize our diver­sity via our indi­vid­u­al­ized screens. It is a pow­er­ful space to be part of. Jean-​​Paul Sartre was well aware of this phe­nom­e­non long before the web came to be, stat­ing: ‘As I am under the gaze I no longer see the eye that looks at me, and if I see the eye, the gaze dis­ap­pears’. In Twit­ter­ville the equi­lib­rium of power shifts as col­lec­tive aware­ness of each other’s pres­ence changes our per­cep­tions of our selves and our space.

Hollywood’s impact on Twit­ter is clearly sig­nif­i­cant as some of the most fol­lowed twit­ter­ers also hap­pen to be celebri­ties. Where would Twit­ter be with­out those well known per­sonas? And what is their agenda? Is it the same as yours? Both Twit­ter­ville and Hol­ly­wood are ever­p­re­sent enti­ties – but which is mim­ic­k­ing which?

Some­times, Twit­ter seems to act as fill­ing a void that we all rec­og­nize in our lives: the need for atten­tion, to belong, to mat­ter and to be rec­og­nized. Those needs can be expressed in many forms: shar­ing infor­ma­tion, ask­ing ques­tions, offer­ing answers. But some tweets feel like botox: unnec­es­sar­ily injected, forced from fear of dis­ap­pear­ing in the crowd, fed by a need to belong. Try­ing to enhance your appear­ance can be an ugly thing.

Through its ongo­ing self-​​described per­sonas and actions, Twit­ter exposes to us, more clearly than any other tech­noso­cial space before it, that humans are social beings and iso­la­tion is not a desir­able posi­tion. We want to be vis­i­ble. Twit­ter is a space where the Hol­ly­wood cul­ture of “con­tent for the peo­ple” clashes with the a cul­ture of “con­tent of the peo­ple”. How we see our­selves in Twit­ter­ville is still, for bet­ter or worse, bound together with Hol­ly­wood – they both rep­re­sent and feed pop­u­lar culture.

The really fas­ci­nat­ing aspect of Twit­ter is observ­ing how impor­tant its space becomes for our deep­est, uncon­scious and inti­mate desires to be shared amongst our­selves. Twit­ter is part of our ongo­ing search for utopia – its space is acces­si­ble and har­mo­nious, but it exposes unin­ten­tion­ally(?) many ugly truths about our­selves. It is our choice to Tweet – we all embody those mes­sages. And just like Hollywood’s celebri­ties, we must rec­og­nize their power and impact beyond Twitt­ter­ville. You have desired and actively con­structed this gaze. Remem­ber, your spec­ta­tors manip­u­late their image, and yours is under a con­stant col­lec­tive surveillance.

2 back to overview

Comments on this article

  1. Written byStewart McCoy on the 12th of April

    Many peo­ple will never use Twit­ter. They have no util­ity for it.

    “What’s Hap­pen­ing?”

    For many, the answer is per­sonal, mun­dane, and shar­ing such hap­pen­ings can cause a per­son to reflect on the mun­dan­ity of their day-​​to-​​day (even moment-​​to-​​moment) life. The reac­tion, nat­u­rally, is to brush off such a waste of time and its appen­dant insecurities.

    Tweet­ing, at it’s best, is about adding value to the pub­lic space. Twit­ter pro­vides a plat­form for exchang­ing cultural/​social cap­i­tal and requires the twit­terer to have a con­sis­tent voice and offer a con­stant flow of value-​​added tweets, and even to some extent have a con­tent strat­egy. Ridicu­lous, I know. But a Twit­terer needs has to offer 140-​​character insights to his or her fol­low­ers that inspire RTs, @s, DMs, and encour­age addi­tional followers.

    Twit­ter is another form of the mar­ket­place. Who is offer­ing the best goods and services?

  2. Written byhttp://slashdot.org/~DIYhomeimprovement24 on the 13th of February

    Thank you for uti­liz­ing time to pub­lish “Scroll Mag­a­zine | Twit­ter­ville by Sebas­t­ian Strakow­icz”.
    Thank you so much for a sec­ond time ‚Arnoldo

  3. Written byGracie on the 3rd of March

    “Scroll Mag­a­zine | Twit­ter­ville by Sebas­t­ian Strakow­icz” T I S was
    in fact a ter­rific arti­cle. How­ever, if it had more pix it could be quite pos­si­bly more ben­e­fi­cial.
    Thanks –Kandi

  4. Written byhttp://primeawnings.Wordpress.com on the 23rd of April

    It seems you know plenty per­tain­ing to this par­tic­u­lar sub­ject mat­ter and that exhibits with this spe­cific blog post, named “Scroll Mag­a­zine | Twit­ter­ville by Sebas­t­ian Strakow­icz”.
    Thank you –Libby

Leave a comment

Don't forget to keep track of further comments too!