Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Myself And/Or Social Media From Posting Ten Thousand Tweets

Thought I should write ‘something’ to mark my 10,000th tweet and this is it. This, being a somewhat arbitrary list (aren’t they all?) but it’s sort of my rules for myself plus some unexpected guff I’ve discovered over the past three years of walking into the middle earth of the web (and some other things that I’ve picked from being online for 17 years or so).

Whilst it might seem like I’m perpetually throwing opinions, ideas, links and “things” into the ether via the hyper-medium of Twitter, there is, perhaps moreso on some unconscious level, some vague logic behind it, and this post is as much an attempt to untangle it for myself, as it is intended to be of use to someone, somewhere, who’s still wondering why we’re all sharing what we’ve had for breakfast (see rule 4).

10) “QUOTE”
Offen times, social media is not so much about communication or connecting but about carving out your own little space in the world. Your stream is just you, dressing the window invitingly, to try to encourage people to come into your cavern for whatever personal or business reasons. For some people it’s a case of sharing knowledge, and in doing so authenticating your existence. For others, Twitter is simply for building awareness of your business or your 'personal brand’ - these are usually the people most interested in the best time of day to tweet and posting things that will spread. For everyone else (most people), there’s no particular agenda and it’s seemingly just about being involved and throwing some 'things’ into the world for no reason in particular - and these can often be the most entertaining people to follow.

One very easy way to translate who you are to whoever you think/hope is following you is by quoting from popular films/books/etc. Also, this can be great for getting a virtual high five in the form of a retweet. For instance, a snippet from this quote was also one of my most retweeted tweets, amid a flurry of “oh look!” and “woo!” posts when it starting to snow.

“You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile… You are not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.” - Tyler Durden from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Rule ten:  Don’t bother saying anything if it’s already been said far betterer than you ever could have said it.

9) BE CONTRARY
If you’ve followed and unfollowed the 'right people’ (is there a word for social-pruning yet? Friendzai?), Twitterz hivemind can often feel quite comforting. Which can also feel as utterly lifeless and numb as your ass on a church pew.

Some of the tweets I’ve had the most response from have come from escaping the nowness of it all - which is somewhat contrary to what you’d expect with a medium that has a default setting of reacting to 'relevant’ current events (no matter how trivial), being lost-in-the-moment and wittering on (and on) about whatever is under your nose. 

“When everyone thinks alike, everyone is likely to be wrong” - The Art of Contrary Thinking (one of my favourite books, it’s about so much more than economics)

“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.” - Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions And the Madness of Crowds

“He said everything is messed up around here, everything is banal and jejune. There is a planetary conspiracy against the likes of you and me in this idiot constituency of the moon. Well, he knew exactly who to blame and we call upon the author to explain.” - Nick Cave & the Badseeds

“Paint the black hole, blacker” - St. Vincent

Rule nine: Step back from the pack and consider your perspective, rather than blurting out your gut reaction. I really recommend trying to find that meditative, eye of the storm-ness every so often and avoiding being carried away. A great thought, like a great song, is always relevant.

8) LANGUAGE IS LARKS 
One of the strangest and most fascinating things (in my somewhat nerdy acronym-hating opinion) about Twitter is that it grew out of the simple concept of group text messaging (hence the not-so-arbitrary one-forty limit), which then evolved into the status update shenanigans that it has long since become. If there’s one thing that I’ve truly enjoyed over the past 10,000 tweets, it’s a vague sense of forcing myself to up my vocabulary because of Twitter. However, I am slightly concerned that I now quite often bash out exactly 140 character-or-less thoughts on first attempt, and I do worry what that might have done to my brain (for better or worse).  I’ve recently noticed that I have also started writing reviews and my Times column centered around a few tweet-worthy thoughts (which I guess is not so different than topic sentences or coming up with killer one-liners).

“This computer can contain a thousand synths, each with a thousand sounds. I try to provide constraints for people.” - Brian Eno

"Fight club became the reason to cut your hair short or trim your fingernails.” - Tyler Durden

Rule eight:  Ignore that old adage that a picture speaks a bajillion words because brevity doesn’t always equate to saying very little. And you should never, under any circumstances, have to resort to using txt spk if you have a qwerty keyboard at your disposal. 

7) BREATHE
Take a breath. Pause. Pause some more. Ask yourself if you really needed to tweet that. I mean, they just died ten minutes ago, are you sure? Really? Honestly? Just imagine if that was the last thing you ever tweeted, would it be the way you would want to be remembered?

I have no real regrets but I wish I could reword some of the mega negative tweets I’ve posted or at the very least elaborate on them like Rivers Cuomo did in a recent edition of Huck. I mean, I don’t hate ALL press officers, there are just some who are so utterly utterly terrible and I know a small corner of my followers find those little outbursts of idiocy entertaining - and I sometimes forget how lucky I am to have the job I have. It’s interesting that some musicians have fallen into this trap too, and in doing so, have robbed their fans of some of the myth and magic in that intimate crevasse between star and admirer-of-their-work, and possibly led many to think how these people don’t realise how lucky they are. 

Twitter was and will likely remain my place for venting (this is not helped by the fact I rarely work in a busy office), it’s just a shame some people have massively misconstrued things I’ve said. However, no one died.

“I know what you think, you think this film is about you but it’s not about you. No! It’s not about you." - Roddy Womble, Idlewild

"I’ll bet you think this song is about you. Don’t you? Don’t you?” - Carly Simon

“Fuck 'em tho, innit.” - The Man On Th’ Street

Rule seven: Don’t shit where you eat. And never piss on someone else’s candle to make yours burn brighter, unless you wanna look like a righ’ cun’.

6) HARK! BACK!
My favourite tweets are always the ones where someone has crate-dug around the internet and found a great piece of writing or archive footage to coincide with some anniversary of something or other.

“Mash-ups mash the history of pop like potatoes, into indistinct, digital-data-grey pulp, a blood-sugar blast of empty carbohydrate energy, flavour-less and devoid of nutritional value… This is a barren genre - nothing will come from it. Not even a mash-up.” - Simon Reynolds

Rule six:  You should follow @Longformorg or @LongReads who both constantly dig up great pieces of writing in a timely fashion. More of 'this sort of thing’, please.

5) FUCK IT
If you have something to say, say it. Sometimes a little light-hearted beef can be entertaining for you and for others (in hindsight, that Alan McGee vs Me saga was quite funny, weren’t it?). Or it might just go completely unnoticed, like when I’ve recently called people up on posting traffic-hungry toss about Amy Winehouse, not a single one of those sewer rats has offered to put any of their related ad revenue into any sort of charity (yet).

“My critique may be of value relevant to the positive garbage heap of philosophy and art which has preceded, or it may end up on a different, smaller garbage heap, eaten by worms and forgotten; either way I will deem it similarly futilely triumphant and triumphantly futile.” - Richard Meltzer

Rule five: Get off the fence or you’ll get stuck like that if you’re not careful. 

4) BE CRYPTIC
Because 'in’ jokes are fun, sometimes. 

“ ” - _

“Holy Shit!” - Trent Reznor

Rule four:  Oblique metaphors can be beautiful. Those who know what you’re referencing feel very 'in’ on your world, and it saves you diluting a moment by sharing it with everyone. 

3) BORE OFF!
Yeah, you know who you are. Stop clogging up my feed with your life. If you’re frustrated or you’ve got a lot to say, post a fricken blog…

“You say it best, when you say nothing at all…” - Alison Krauss / Ronan Keating

“tl;dr” - Everyone

Rule three: Get a blog. Or goto the pub. Or I’m hitting unfollow.

2) PATCHWORK YOURSELF
This is all an illusion.

“You just have to be who you are…” - Roddy Womble, Idlewild

“Each time this identity announces itself, someone or something cries: Look out for the trap, you’re caught. Take off, get free, disengage yourself.” - Jaques Derrida  

“By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising…kill yourself. Thank you.” - Bill Hicks

Rule nine: This is a self-presentation society. 

1) LIST, LIST AND LIST SOME MORE  
People love lists, and they often retweet them. Especially if they’re full of clever quotes. It doesn’t really matter if the list is researched or if it’s utterly arbitrary, you are likely to get more clicks because it will appear as if it’s probably something easy to digest or to discover something unexpected from but mostly because people want to be outraged by something, and if there isn’t a Daily Mail link going around, they’ll find a list to take issue with. @drownedinsound gets its most click-throughs from social media to lists, either when adding something to our recommended records list or making a list (British Sea Power’s Top 5 Castles anyone?) or sharing a thread discussing a [NME] list. It requires a great deal of restraint to not constantly come up with cynical list concepts. 

“I fucken hate lazy listicles!” - Sean Adams

Rule one: There are no rules.

http://twitter.com/seaninsound

Photo above of Bentall shopping centre in Kingston via Flickr. Found via a Google search for Spiderweb Lomography