Follow The Holy Shepherd of Twitter into Hell

I'll accept that I'm a bit of a boomer git but frankly, I think social media enhances society the way SS guards enhanced the Nazi  Prisoner of War camp experience. Back then, captives came in many varieties -Poles, Americans, French, British, Australians, Norwegians, Kiwis...and during the day they would meet for exercise, mix, chat, swap stories and information. 

But when night fell, they would be bullied, threatened, yelled at, driven apart into racial or national groups and penned up together with "their own kind". In other words, they would be deliberately divided up and prevented from gathering strength in numbers.

The SS knew what they were doing. They understood controlling such large amounts of  prisoners would be almost impossible if the differing groups united around their common ideas and developed unified strategies for opposing their jailers.

It has always seemed obvious to me that Twitter serves precisely the same purpose. Except it's always night-time on Twitter and the captives only exercise their thumbs.

When the platform first became popular, many people I knew leapt in feet-first, with only three results, as far as I could see.  

                  GROW YOUR AUDIENCE

(1) Hours and hours of time wasted on distracting, meaningless notifications

(2) Endless irritation about stupid things tweeted by idiots

(3) Growing frustration with Twitter and the world in general

What benefits people were getting from this, beyond "growing an audience" I never could see. And while growing an audience is clearly a good thing if you are "marketing yourself online"  only a minute amount of people generate a worthwhile income from such processes. The overwhelming majority of Twitter users are merely squeaking aimlessy in the dark to no real purpose.

When friends tried to seduce me into the cult I was prone to reply "Thanks, but if I wanted to argue with anonymous half-wits yelling their delusions out loud, I know pubs where I can get that and beer too." Of course, times have changed and that option is no longer available. As a trip to the pub in 2021 is about as rewarding as having sex with the furniture (and come on, we've all done it) maybe tweeting is the last resort.

In search of community spirit, then, I decided to give my gate-leg table the night off (she's such a tease) and open a Twitter account. For experimental purposes, you understand.

Now I'll come clean here. My interest in Twitter, beyond observing its awful effects on   previously nice folk, has been zero. So I had very little idea of what would be involved. Here, then, is my Twitter newbie experience, edited for your enjoyment.

Getting Started

Being the paranoid old cynic I am, I created a Google account complete with Gmail address, had my VPN relocate me to Iceland and then approached Twitter. (Just in case they were feeling naughty with their clever cookies and all.)

I got off to a good start. In order to "create a profile" I was invited to upload a picture, and a "header" picture, and a few words to  "introduce myself" . I did all three, and pretty easy it was too. Nothing in the images or the words I uploaded could possibly identify me or my interests. I wanted to see what Twitter would do confronted by a ‘blank canvas’ human.  

Immediately a list headed "WHO TO FOLLOW" appeared, topped by the unmistakeable porcine visage of the tv oaf Piers Morgan. This is perhaps, the most revealing insight yet regarding the purpose of Twitter. Consider that despite ostensibly knowing nothing whatsoever about me except that I communicate in the English language, the Twitter algorithm  concluded that the stimulus to which I would most likely respond is the prospect of a professional windbag thinking out loud.   

So far so bad. I could see there was the opportunity to search for stuff I might be interested in so I entered a few simple searches. Without exception I received results directing me towards mainstream publications, obvious commercial outlets and the kind of grinning Morganesque idiots they call “celebrities” in that parallel universe from which I long ago withdrew.

After a short ponder I typed in “weather modification” –a subject in which I have a long-standing interest and a considerable amount of detailed information to hand. I know quite a bit about WETMOD and have indeed written at length on the topic. [ SEE THIS FOR SOME EXCLUSIVE STUFF] 

Twitter’s response was illuminating, if not perhaps, in the manner I might have preferred. I was offered the opportunity to “follow” a half dozen sky-watchers mainly in rural America,. Now I’m sure they are very nice people but  I saw no reason to just open random communication with any of them . Out of growing boredom I clicked on one individual who turned out to be a retired police officer to see what else they had tweeted apart from cellphone chemtrail videos. This person had also uploaded a rather fetching meme involving a wild lion and a caged one comparing the two as lifestyles. After a minute of pondering this issue I wondered where I was heading and why, although I may simply have been light-headed due to lack of caffeine caused by fiddling with Twitter. 

Having reached the limit of the Lion whim, I returned to “home”. I thought maybe if I searched for uk weather manipulation or some such I might get a better response. But as fate would have it I hesitated after typing “UK” , and lo and behold, Twitter offered me list of twitter accounts I might like to “follow”. Here they are:  

    

It's not often that I see a list naming the top three sources of information I would never, ever trust -and in the correct order as regards my contempt for them. But there they were, the Beeb, the Mail and the Johnson, one two three.

Now I was getting the hang of the game, I searched for "bloggers". Twitter's "who to follow" section immediately switched, offering me "black bloggers". I see no need to comment on this as the process speaks very well for itself.

Having come thus far I sighed, picked a random group of skywatchers, "followed" them,  and Tweeted a rather superior video of high-altitude aerosol spraying which I filmed myself two years ago. With a short, jolly comment.  

Then I sat there thinking, am I duh...supposed to just sit here now, waiting for...duh...somebody -anybody- to engage with me? Life's too short (well it is at my age dude) so I logged out and returned to reality. Being a committed bread-head I knocked up some dough, did the hand-kneading thang, and then a few other more tricky, sticky bits over a period of hours, eventually producing a very satisfying loaf about which I bragged to my long-suffering partner at some length.

Something you can do instead of tweeting

 

As we ate this delicious product, I reflected that making bread by hand was more fun than Twitter. I decided, however, to check back in the following day in case anything had occurred. 

Although I was up and running at 7 a.m., day two of my Twitter oddyssey got off to late start because I'd completely forgotten about Twitter which was probably a strategic intervention by the selective dementia employed by my subconscious mind. When I finally remembered, I logged out of me and back into Tiwtterman's Icelandically challenged account to find that nothing whatsoever (as far as I could tell) had happened. But a very large picture of a loaf of hand-made bread was centre-screen, with an invitation to "follow" some well-groomed commercial bread-head who clearly had stuff to sell. I see no need to comment on this as the process speaks very well for itself. I reminded myself to tape up the microphone on my laptop again.

I stuck around prodding the odd key and eventually discovered my debut tweet had been viewed three times. While I was rejoicing over this discovery the unforgiving brain of Twitter began offering me a selection of American police-officers as potential Twitterpals -or whatever you call them, damned if I know. I guessed this was the inevitable consequence of yesterday's careless click on the skywatching cop with the lion meme.  

A few minutes later -I couldn't say how many- I realised I was staring vacantly at the screen with not a single thought in my head except a vague, quasi-mystic longing to be an ex-police officer living on a generous pension somwhere quiet and sunny like Arizona...then I got the hell off Twitter and swore never to go back.

WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THIS?

Don't get me wrong. I know very well I could have wandered onto any of a hundred "threads" and spent the rest of my entire waking life barking my sixpenceworth into an endless babbling chorus of eager Twitteristas. But why, for the love of god, why?  I couldn't care less which  millionaire football players support BLM. If I never find out what famous TV employees really think about mass migration I'll be delighted. I'm not going to join Extinction Rebellion on the back of reading a sob-tweet about polar bears..

Courtesy of the Coronoalords I don't have much left of a life -but I'm not going to waste one crumb of my existence trapped in a virtual beer-free bar full of self-important pea-brains overcompensating for their lack of friends.There was a time when people knew better than to squander the fruits of their mind  in a digitised circle-jerk.  

THE NEW GODS

It's far from inspiring to observe the combined efforts of Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, and see what they have brought upon the world. Between them, the howling bear-pit of Twitter, the soul-destroying ghetto of Facebook and the cancerous plague of Amazon now dominate the lives and thoughts of untold millions. Unhappiness, confusion, resentment  and division now flourish like runaway weeds; these are the achievements of our New Gods.   If Twitter had never existed I can't imagine why anyone less than a megalomaniac sociopath would want to invent it, but that, of course, is precisely what happened. What games these odd creatures play en route to their dirty great billions.

Ian Andrew-Patrick

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