Tweeting and the Twitter Twits at the BBC

Two weeks ago the Today Programme, mainly through the agency of Mr John Humphries, had a go at Twitter. Apparently Mathew Paris had been asked to judge some kind of student competition and the audience and participants were invited to tweet each other throughout. What the competition was and why the invitation was extended I have no idea, nor do I wish to have one. Mathew Paris responded in a brilliant piece of prose within the character limit which was admirable, if rather scathing. I have no argument with Mr Paris at all. I respect him both as an ex-politicians, journalist and excellent commentator. What I take exception to was the patronising, and at times dismissive response of Mr Humphries and the background sniggerers in the studio. It was clear that the gargling classes in this matter did not understand what Twitter could be about, would rather not know, and displayed their technophobe credentials, rather like the primitive who might spurn the benefits of an invention like the parachute.

In my experience the phobia to which I refer is displayed by a mocking laziness which denies the possibility that there might be something in the subject under discussion. Those who will decry what I have called the ‘privatisation of society’, namely the cloistering of us all into out little boxes where we are unlikely to know who is in the next box, also decry the expansion of communications which are now available to us all. From our ‘isolated’ residence, as journalists often describe this part of the world, I can be in touch with any number of people , check out my facts and e-mail my MPs and Councillor should I so wish. I am as isolated as I want to be or as much in the swim as I feel I need to be. Granted, there are all sorts of people using Twitter, many of whom you will quickly block, but there are others who you will gladly spare some time to see what they have to say or what information they want to pass on. This can be both entertaining and informative, as well as plain nosy.

So why all the mockery? In the first place it is a natural response when confronted by something new, which requires a bit of effort to understand, and which consciously or subconsciously threatens the status quo, to resort to mocking the messenger. Secondly, and I have banged on about this several times already, perhaps the antagonism is prompted by seeing all this ‘talking’ to each other as a threat. They are quite right to do so because it may well expose the fragility of their own democratic principles. All I can say is to tell them to read, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, and they might just see that it really is better to communicate, rather than to remain silent.

Dacier