The Village of Twitter: or the Neighbourhood Narrow Nook

Twitterville has been quiet the last 24 hours -- in part because Scoble didn't post for 24 hours while jetlagged after a trip to Israel and reconnecting with his family lol. I'll bet the makers of Twitter were relieved to give their servers a rest from him and his followed 21,000 and 20,000 followers each generating something like half a million tweet a day to each other -- right? Somebody figure out that math.

The other reason is that these self-congratulatory Valley A-listers must have gotten bored with Twitter. 1938media, about whom I even made a somewhat ambivalent fan group, hasn't posted for ages, and even ShelIsrael, the target of all his puppets, hasn't been around much, maybe with the holidays.

Loren Feldman (the 1938media guy) has of course produced the all-time motto of the universe for me: "If I want to make fucking puppets, I will make fucking puppets. If I want to make fucking puppets for a year straight, I will make fucking puppets for a year straight."

It was great for a while when Loren was posting, because it added some urban ascerbic chic to the whole Village of Twitter. Because like Second Life, Twitter is a horrid, stifling, oppressive, conservative village. It's the sort of place where, if you have half a brain, you just want to shake the dust from your feet. Yet, you keep needing a haircut or a hair-do, so you keep going back to the barbershop or the beauty parlour and you keep chatting...in between bouts of watching the paint dry on the new luncheonette...

It's funny to me to see all the features of social media that we could see intrinsically contained in the Sims Online in 2000...in Second Life in 2003...are now flowering and blooming all over the Internet on all the social media run on the same principles as the Sims or Second Life -- which after all, were just accelerated versions of these things serving as a petrie dish -- and of course that's why the A-listers should have taken it more seriously.

A woman I don't know who I think friended me on Facebook or something once, @susanreynolds suddenly declared that "a black cloud had fallen over Twitter" because of Prok being mean (yes, they talk that way in the Village -- all those millions of Twitterers, with the sun blotted out. It seems she thought I dissed somebody with a name like @GeekMommy; that @GeekMommy, bewildered, said she hadn't heard of me -- by the time this game of Gossip was over, it turned out it was a mistake on that round -- but apparently what Susie didn't like is that I *gasp* said I didn't like Mommyblogging or Survivorblogging. Gasp, that's tantamount to colluding with Satan, of course, but I just don't like it. I think that during those phases in my life that I have babies with loaded diapers and open surgical wounds while I lie in my bed of pain, I'll keep it to myself, or those people in real life in real time right next to me at the moment -- isn't that what offline real life is all about? Connection in the meat space where the meat is...

There's something about how the over-examined life isn't worth living, either...

MOMMYBLOGGERS UNITE!

Mommyblogger Queen of Spain (doesn't that term "mommyblogger" make you retch?!) got herself on the Huffington Post (!) whining that Arrington had blocked her from following you.

I find it just AWFUL that these "A-listers" -- the big, swinging dicks of social media like Mike Arrington of TechCrunch -- are able to *attempt to stop people from seeing their content*. Of course, in our little hothouse of Second Life, we saw how THAT works, with Busybody actually blocking me from even visiting/seeing his website (!) on the World Wide Web lol. We should rename it to Neighbourhood Narrow Nook lol.

This woman whom I have never heard of (apparently she's a big deal out in California) with the frivolous name of Queen of Spain (Galactica Cookie, you have some competition in the cutesie department!), got herself mentioned everywhere as blocked by Arrington because she pointed out that he had been scooped on the CNN block story by others -- he had been watching it, and didn't post it. Why? Because deep down, Mike Arrington is rooting for China, Inc. as he believes it will be the best tide to float his own boats and he really, deep-down doesn't care about freedom of speech or the Tibets of the Internet -- he has other fish to fry. Did I put enough nautical metaphors in this paragraph?

Rather than showing any kind of curiosity, or solidarity, about the other people blocked by Arrington, QoS whined about herself only, and then theorized it was because she had shamed him. It's actually because he didn't want to post the story, and she missed the deeper point here (his actual pro-China bias). QoS could have also been annoying to constantly answer -- people block you from following so that you stop seeing their Tweets and stop answering. Of course, they can't block you completely as you can always read their page or read them on Tweetscan...but it's the thought that counts, and soon, if these people are left to run everything, they'll intervene to arbitrarily block anybody they don't want to be in the club. Imagine, a newspaper publisher trying to stop you from reading his newspaper because he didn't want you to be able to respond to some opinionated and biased op-ed he printed! And that's what it's about...

I found this oped so perfectly descriptive of the problem in the Twitter Village. In part, it's a matter of the narrow-minded geek squad again, the tekki wikinistas with their literalisms, their biases they take for "the truth," their rabid, trailing, zealous fanboyz. But it's also about urban sensibilities versus rural sensibilities.

I have so longed for SL to become urbanized. By that, I mean to become more populated, more diverse, more sophisticated, more tolerant. In its early days, it was a suffocatingly small town, even being from what is supposed to be witty and hip and sophisticated San Francisco. Any place that only has one idea will be like that.

INFOWEEK INFOCALYPSE!

So another dust-up occurs with Mitch Wagner. Of course, Mitch Wagner isn't an A-lister as he himself will tell you -- and that's all to his credit. He's a middle America mensch, a good guy, a straight talker, and not generally a hyper of tech -- but an intelligent commentator. I think that's why he's popular in RL and SL. In SL, he is well liked, and justifiably so, for "getting it" about SL, but not being a smarmy booster like Hamlet nee Linden Au.

BTW because I use the word "smarmy" and "shill," some people, like @susanreynolds, imagine I am someone called Amanda Chapel -- whom I don't really know, and only recently, began reading. This person is apparently active skewing the PR industry, some say, because she was fired from some big PR firm. She must be doing something right -- her stuff is fabulous. I love it. And the way you can tell her from me is she puts "smarmy shillisms* all into one sentence lol -- I keep the words usually in two separate sentences. That's what makes her an A-list writer and me a amateur blogger : )

Mitch, God bless him, had this heart-warming article about this lovely happy little tree story about Twitter. Twitter, as we know, saves lives by helping people during earthquakes. Well, at least...we think it does...wait...those people are just cutting and pasting stuff they read on Google news...they think they know a guy in the quake...well wait...ok, don't use that please...

We all remember saving @spin from certain abduction or felony 3 robbery at the very least when he got lost on the N or the W train taking a wrong connection off the L...instead of going to Silicon Alley, he wound up in Harmlet and we were all trying to call him lol. Of course, if he were REALLY lost, Twitter wouldn't save him -- his ability to take out his $695 i-Phone and call somebody or use $100 US if he had to, to take a cab, would likely be more in his favour. But it's the thought that counts -- people are looking SO HARD for something to justify their hours wasted on Twitter.

So Mitch fastens on the story of the guy in Egypt who typed ARRESTED into Twitter just as he was, and he and others credit this act with saving him from certain torture in an Egyptian prison.

I certainly narrowed my eyes at that one -- the guy's US passport, coupled with the fact that Egypt sucks down like the 2nd greatest amount of US foreign aid could well have something to do with it.

So my expression of some dislike of this rather giddy viewpoint -- from someone who I don't see as normally too giddy and hypey about tech -- is disconcerting. Disconcerting -- because it ads to the memes replicating like kudzu across the blogosphere claiming this victory for Twitter, which, well, isn't really a demonstrable case of the crowd-source-save everybody wishes it were. A UC graduate journalism student claiming he harnessed the power of social media? Not. As one person in the comments aptly put -- it's a case of group texting and more about a cell phone than an application...

Here's what really torqued me about what Mitch said:

We often discuss how the Internet and 21st century surveillance technology threaten individual privacy. And those concerns are valid. But it's equally true that these technologies make it more difficult for governments, big business, and other large institutions to operate in secrecy against individuals.

Oh, do we? Where? When was the last time *Mitch himself in his columns* did this. That's problem number one. He doesn't do that -- Google as I might, I'm not seeing it. He thinks someone else out there does it. But...they don't.

He makes a brisk nod to the "valid concerns". But he is impatient. "BUT" he tells us! And then proceeds to make an unsubstantiated claim: "these technologies make it more difficult for governments, big business, and other large institutions to operate in secrecy against individuals."

I wish. Except...that's not what happened. An affluent American with connections and an i-Phone and some friends got himself out of jail in a country that receives a boatload of American aid for strategic reasons. Let him use these same techniques to get an Egyptian blogger out of jail! That's what torques me...

Worse, I see Mitch *does* know better (hence, the greater disconcerting effect). In the same piece, he admits that he may have overblown the Libertarian story -- that perhaps it was a bit more complex. As indeed it was.

The mobs created on Twitter might do good occasionally -- only if other factors are there, and sometimes, almost as if by accident. The mobs created there often do as much bad, and raise, really really troubling concerns about how life will be like when it is ALL like this with no recourse.

Example is Mitch himself. On Twitter, here's what I microblog about his piece:

And for about 30 rounds, he keeps denying it. I keep explaining over and over again, and he keeps not getting it. He keeps taking everthing literally, and keeps making it seem as if I've made some horrid, outrageous, ad hominem attack.

But I haven't.

All I've done is *criticize his facile, liberal, received wisom*. And I've pushed back:

Prokofy Neva Prokofy @MitchWagner, godDAMN I will not let you techlib nerds hijack everything with your frigging politically correct People's Power movements

check out p. 14 and before to get a flavour of this typical go-nowhere debate, because the frame of it is one in which the person criticized simply plays unfair, denying one the ability to criticize; claimly falsely that one is "rude" or "making ad hominems".

Nobody likes to have "Goddamn" said at them. Mitch may be parochial enough that being called "a techlib nerd" may sting. He may bristle at being accuse of "hijacking" anything or being "politically correct" or running any "people's power movements'>

And yet, that's exactly what he does with a claim as he has made in this piece: that while we can make a token nod to privacy and data control issues in social media, they bring about accountability of governments so they are unmistakeable a Good Thing, and when people harness them, they inevitably do good.

I've taken 3 times as long to say this as Brian Connolly on Strumpette (run by Amanda Chapel), who does it much better.

I can tell I must be making sense, because Mitch then flies into an extreme, accusing me of extremes, that I must be saying all social media is crap and nothing can come of it. Oh, I don't know, maybe something will. It can only be as good as the people using it. Faxes get people out of jail maybe a bit faster than phone calls; e-mails better than faxes; Twitters maybe a bit faster than either. Maybe?

What I'm wary of is the swarming, self-righteous mom. Mitch is quick to applaud the phenomenon selectively when it selectively does good; he seems blind to its destructiveness -- the kind of mob rule that enables arrogant socmediacrats like Arrington to incite hate and build constituencies based on tendentiousness.

An ugly thug on Twitter who I quite properly pointed out was psychopathic and broken, when his number was gotten, threatened to send people to me in RL, to beat me up, and to teach me reality. Great. This produced a lone protest, but a kind of wussy "Hey, don't threaten people". I pushed back a lot harder than that : )
What's astounding, as always, is that a freak like that continues to get responses and inclusive in a conversation that should be calling him on his tactics -- the same problem like csven Concord.

And it's so typical of the male geek Twitterati that they can remain silent in front of real thuggery, and continue to converse with freaks, and yet if a person they don't view as a male alpha, or a female, is speaking in ways they deem "rude," they harangue them to death.

I took up the interesting debate of why it is that Arrington, Feldman, Israel, QueenofSpain or any o fthe A-listers can be acidic and rude and cynical, and never draw a comment, but if I use even half of this same sharpness, I'm anaethema.

And here, Mitch basically says, "Because they are a-listers in the big city, and we are in the village and you're not an a'lister." He puts this in these terms: "Because they aren't talking to me, and I'm not talking to them, but you are talking to me, and therefore you can't do this."

So let's get this straight: I'm anaethema, and throwing a black clowd over Twitter, and must be restrained, and cannot be allowed in the conversation, because I said...

" godDAMN I will not let you techlib nerds hijack everything with your frigging politically correct People's Power movements"

The techlibs are overstating it, Mitch first and foremost. They are hijacking social media to make unsupportedly claims about it that are reflexive and falsely empower it further; -- and it is politically correct, and it is a fake people's power movement that is really just elites inciting mobs, and calling them grassroots democratic movements. I hate that stuff.

Comments

[Jane2 McMahon]

Dead on re over-exposed lives...has anyone tried to stone you to death with frozen peas yet?

[Prokofy Neva]

I hate forced fads that are artificially posing as spontaneity.

[Radar Masukami]

i don't like herd mentalities. a LOT of what goes on in social media is herd mentality. thinking others have to engage in what you do, and not what you don't, is herd mentality. herd mentality is wrong, stupid, and to be avoided at all costs.

[Susan Reynolds / in SL Tynan Clary]

Reminder: Right after you were axed by the Nick Wilson, I sent a private twitter message offering to share some information you might find helpful.

I had contact from other women concerning this person and thought I could pass on some insight about his penchant for taking advantage of women.

We briefly discussed your situation and you went on to explain having represented him at a conference a short time before that and how he had not been suitably respectful of that.

We also discussed that during the same time period I had been told by Nick that I was no longer needed:
a.) after having done all the inworld and social media PR for Nick in prep for his big Metaversed - Metanomics series and b.) this conveniently happened the week it was funded by some big name sponsors which was SUPPOSEDLY the point where he would begin to share the sponsorship money to repay me for the time.

At that time you asked me to connect on facebook to have a more lengthy conversation. So the contact on my part was a continuation of my effort to be kind and supportive. And connecting on facebook was something done at your request.

As for survivorblogging. I hadn't heard your opinion that "the over-examined life isn't worth living" I assume this is in relation to my invasive cancer diagnosis and how I began to write the same day I was diagnosed - thus http://boobsonice.com

I don't think my life's worth living some days either. I just hope my grandkids do, and maybe by sharing some of the story it might help someone else.

No this comment is not an attack on you, nor an invitation to debate, contact, or otherwise. It's a simple statement of the facts.

[Prokofy Neva]

Susan,

You are incredibly selective and distorted in your memory -- and you need to be made aware of that -- even if you have all kinds of excuses.

You made a HUGE deal of being SECRETIVE and contacting me in a direct message that you had something urgent to tell me about how Nick Wilson exploited women.

But...You never told me what it was, what it involved, what happened to you, or anything even in the detail you provide now, which is scant.

For some reason, you couldn't see your way clear to talking inworld normally about this, or writing a normal email about it -- you didn't even explain that you had done the PR, and that was right before the big sponsors came (you are only saying this *now*). YOU suggested you could somehow speak more freely on Facebook and I suggested that merely as a concession to your obsession with privacy or something, thinking it odd that it took that.

After that, you never wrote a single Facebook email about this, explaining what was so important that you just had to contact me by DM and have a private confab about all this. You just kept saying you'd get back to me -- and didn't. You seem to have entirely forgotten this.

Of course, you've had surgery, you've been sick, I quite understand, but I do have to wonder: what the hell is the big deal from the get go? Why the pretend solidarity? What was so hard about explaining what it was the first instance instead of being manipulative, secretive and coy -- especially if you can say NOW what it was all about on my blog?!

You only *imagine* that you were "helpful". But...you weren't helpful. You were merely manipulative and secretive and NOT helpful. You never explained even what you are explaining now -- are you aware of yourself?!

And you falsely accused me of attacking someone I didn't know, hadn't talked to, and didn't know me, and accused me of putting a "black cloud over Twitter" (!) for merely writing that I *don't like mommyblogging*. So, sue me.

Yes, sorry to rain on your parade, or be politically incorrect, but I don't care for survivorblogging, either. Guess what, I'm a survivor, too of all kinds of things. I don't chose to take everybody along on the ride with me because I think people externalizing obsessively like that aren't really dealing with what they have to deal with, with the people they need to have help them -- in real life, in person. I think people who let it all hang out and blab constantly on the Internet, far from being transparent, true, and accountable are in a terribly insidious form of denial and subterfuge.

That's my fervent opinion. Sorry if that isn't the PC thing of the day, but I'm entitled to think and do as I like, just as you are. You have no moral superiority here.

You're hoping to gain credits, pity, points, etc. etc. Sorry I can't play this game with you, Susan. Surely you have more important things to do than show off on my blog?!

[Crap Mariner]

Updates: 20,584

Lots and lots of public @'s that could have been done with DMs.

Even if it was high-signal champagne and not noisy city water, it's still trying to drink from the fire hose.

If that's what social marketers are teaching for Web 2.0, well, where's the off ramp to Web 3.0?

[Prokofy Neva]

I didn't get what you meant at first, Crap.

So you're saying that Susan Reynolds has 20,000 plus updates. I checked -- she does. I have like 5700 and I thought *I* was wordy. I am not on as much, but when I do come on, I just type away, and if it takes 40 updates to say one thing, well, that's what i do, I don't let a little thing like 140 characters get in my way lol.

I almost never talk in DMs. That REALLY seems stupid. I mean, if there was someone I wanted to talk to, I'd either talk to them on normal IMs inworld, or on Skype or something that doesn't have that damn char limitation. I'd only use it now and then for something very brief.

Well, fire hoses don't bother me per se. And the off ramp is easy: unfollow, filter.

I'm not content to have people stay smug in their little cliques tho, I think it's good to challenge them./

[Crap Mariner]

If Susan's output were open conversation on various items of general interest, sure.

But when I find someone's output indistinguishable from, say, the HI!Spam of Hyme Neurocam, I'm not going to waste time picking wheat from the mounds of chaff.

And when there's a flood of unidirectional personal messages on the party line clouding up my timeline, them's gone gator - DROP.

And perhaps that's a sign that somebody who is considered a branding expert or an example of effective branding really isn't - maybe what they say could be important or enlightening, but in the end any message is lost in the sea of contentless mud.

Yes, I've dumped and/or blocked the Boston Marketers to clear that clique out of my timeline. Dumped or blocked a lot of hokmiachinik types. And I'm sure that there's folks that have done the same with my own schizotwits. Happens. Life goes on.

On the other hand, folks like Cybergrrl Oh/Aliza S. and others have split the personal chatfeeds from the professional/serious side of their output.

Seeing Twitter as "Noise to be filtered out" instead of as "Signal you need to subscribe to bit-by-bit" sounds like a half-glass-full-half-empty, eh?

[Prokofy Neva]

I think Twitter is yes, a signal you need to subscribe to bit by bit. Some people create close little circles of girlfriends and gossip with them and imagine the world is fascinated, i.e. about babies with loaded diapers and open surgical wounds festering. Some male geeks also think the world is fascinating with us hearing about how they stay awake on Red Bulls and kick and bang on applications that they think are the suxxors.

But of course...you can just unsubscribe to the feed if you are watching Twitter regularly all day. If you only tune in a few times a day, you can scroll past. I don't get it on my phone and would never dream of having it on my phone as it is now. Tuning in on the web is a better option, and I also find that a list of about 50 people I really dislike in SL are better served not by irritating me in a twitter feed, but just being looked up individually, and read for their week's output on a page to see if they had anything besides their usual arrogant mindless drivel to contribute (answer: usually not).