I was absolutely determined not to go back on twitter, after all the agonising about how it had turned me into someone I didn't like or even recognise. I realised that like any utility it is MY tool, I am not a slave to twitter. I would say that I was addicted, I even had strong psychological cravings for the excitement, the banter, the people. The problem and also the joyful hook is that in everyday life we have interpersonal relationships with anyone we come into contact with, be it family, friends, work collegues, clients or just a fellow traveller on the train. We can 'read' those situations, given that 90% of communication is non-verbal, ie; someone's facial expression the tone of their voice, their hand gestures or posture, allow us to appropriately respond within any given context. Someone I'm travelling next to on the train for example would not expect me to warmly embrace them or describe the underwear I have on, well they may actually like it were they an hetrosexual male, but given the context of the situation it may well scare the crap out of them (remember Fatal Attraction???). In a different situation, maybe with my husband or a close friend those actions would not be unusual 'for me'. You may have a less intimate way of going with your friends. My point is without the NON-VERBAL clues, we automatically infer 'traits' to the other person we are communicating with online. We do this based on our past experiances, on our secret longings, or unconscious desires. We attribute them with personality traits they may or may not have, traits that we strongly like, or strongly dislike. Where the mind has gaps of information it tends to fill from our own imagination. This is why quite often a movie may be a big dissappointment to someone who has loved the book, ie;the director's imagination was too different or fell short of what the viewers imagination had already attributed to the charecters, when reading and enjoying the written word. As you read this you may well believe that you have a fair idea of what I am like 'in real life', but unless you know me personally, your ideas are based mostly on your own imaginings of what I am like, and those will be based on whether what I have written has triggered a like or dislike response. If you were to meet me 'in real life' you may be very dissappointed or suprisingly pleased. This is the psychological phenomena I experianced when I was twittering away communicating with a host of people I don't really know, but believed that truely we shared a bond, a kinship, between us. Smoke and Mirrors! Of course the reverse is also true, in that some twitter friendships I enjoyed grew into outside of twitter friendships, and I still regulary communicate with some previous twitter pals. We may even meet at some stage, but outside of the frenetic, competitive world of twitter, there is time, to develope those relationships, which may or maynot grow into real life friendships. Who knows. So why did I go back to twitter? Something that suprised me is that as well as interacting with other tweeters I gained access to an emmense store of knowledge on twitter, I missed the regular news updates that are so much superiour to the telly news! I missed being part of a community that supports human rights, and opposes oppression, and makes me smile with silly quotes and jokes. I am a seasoned tweeter now, I am not in it to 'feed my ego' ( I have my blog for that! :), seriously only kidding! I will not go chasing after followers, or feel I have to be entertaining to justify their follow. I will not break my neck to be at my laptop for every friday #FF night!!! I may not #FF recommend anyone again. In short I ,will be a sensible twitter user, content to bottom feed, lurking and chatting to a few, other, small fry like me at the bottom of the pool, I will leave the shallows for the colourful, pretty, amusing folk, with their vast shoal of followers, the ones we all aspire to be like, I am content just to be me.
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