I don’t know who thought this up, but today is ‘Positive Twitter Day’ and it means that we’re all supposed to abandon the habits of a lifetime and only tweet positive things today. I’m going to enthusiastically take part and be complete sweetness and light for a whole 24 hours.
A lot of social media brings out the worst in us, and I am no exception. But Twitter is worse than any other form of social media because it is so spontaneous and instantaneous. Before you know it even the mildest of insults provoke us into saying things we’d never dream of saying to someone’s face. It’s actually very unhealthy and divisive.
The Brexit debate is the worst for this. Both sides sit in their trenches and fire twitter missiles without even the vaguest attempt to understand the other is making. OK, it’s not easy to have a meaningful debate when you’re restricted to 280 character. But even so. From time to time I convince myself to stop tweeting about Brexit because it just encourages the loons who describe themselves as #FBPE. To me they belong to a cult that worships at the altar of the EU and view anyone who voted Brexit as an out and out racist who deliberately voted Brexit to make the country worse off. But see what I did there? I called them ‘loons’.
I’ve got to the point where if I had a different job I’d think very seriously about abandoning Twitter altogether. But I can’t. I need it to market what I do. Don’t get me wrong, there are aspects of it that I love. It’s great for following a breaking news story, and a great resource. Ask any question and someone on Twitter will know the answer. Where else can I instantly communicate with 117,000 people? Ok, on the radio, but you know what I mean. Where else can I sample public opinion in such an easy way? So even though I increasingly hate the Twitter experience, its positives still outweigh the negatives. Just.
So, come on everybody. Be nice on Twitter today. It will make you feel good about yourself.
