A response to Will Self: Twitter’s glorious anarchy is to be admired
Posted on March 3, 2012Last week, I found myself forced to buy something from a newsagents in order to get change to access a station toilet. Browsing the shelves, I happened across the New Statesman – Britain’s most absorbent weekly political publication, and chose that.
I confess, and I hope Mehdi Hasan and Laurie Penny will forgive me, that I had never bought the NS before. It’s never really fallen into the “interesting enough even if I disagree” or the “so effective an enemy I can’t miss it” categories.
Leafing through, I found a piece by Will Self, gaunt king of the art of using obscure words just to show off, critiquing Twitter. In pursuit of payment and his disdain for free media – sorry, new media – the article is not on the NS site, though it can be found here.
There have been numerous attempts to bemoan Twitter, some (such as attacks on the mobbish nature of some debate) with good reason. As Self is a clever man, if not often a correct one, I thought I would explore his case.
The article resided in the “Critics” section of the magazine, alongside reviews of books, theatre and other arts. I was surprised, therefore, to find Self declaring that he had never, ever actually looked at Twitter.
How odd. Have the NS film reviewers watched the films in question? Or do they simply guess, informed only by second hand rants and uninformed assumptions?
For that matter, can their book reviewers read? Do they need to, if not having experienced the subject of your review is apparently a qualification for penning it?
Perhaps the New Statesman’s Editorial team would accept my tourist review of the surface of the Moon. It would be gripping, vivid and heartily opinionated. It would also be lacking foundation and essentially made up – on which counts, judging by Self’s piece, it fits their criteria perfectly.
There is of course a reason why reviewers tend to prefer to experience a thing before writing its review. Without doing so, they cannot start to assess or understand it.
All of which explains why Self’s “review” is wrong on the detail, mashing up Twitter terms with irrelevant references to Farmville and Facebook pictures.
But it also explains why his assessment of Twitter’s social impact is mistaken.
Twitter, he posits, is the same as a 1970s dinner party, full of people who want to show you holiday slides and drone on incessantly. No advance, no improvement, just a “new home for old bores”.
I won’t pretend Twitter has revolutionised the quality of human conversation. There are undeniably boring accounts – Katie Price and Polly Toynbee, to name two.
However, unlike being stuck at a dinner party, users are not forced to listen to anyone. Indeed, as well as tuning out the undesirable, they can listen to whomsoever in the world that they might wish.
Had he ever used Twitter, Will Self would know that it’s not a dinner party at all. It’s a supermarket, where you can put whatever you like in your basket and leave what you don’t like on the shelves.
And this is where Twitter brings its real value. As well as instant access to any famous person of their choice, anyone can become famous on the merit of their thoughts and content.
In so doing, the platform is a leveller – indeed, it’s a Leveller with a capital L. Now anyone can rise, if their content is good enough, and anyone can fall, regardless of their fame.
There are many other aspects of Twitter which one can find beautifully new.
The productivity and even genius that springs out of its utter chaos is inspiring.
The speed with which a great mass of people can learn, influence each other and act is terrifying.
Forcing oneself to be concise but clear is a refreshing mental exercise, and a great way to rediscover the reach of the English language. This whole article, for example, is written only in tweet-length sentences of 140 characters or less, an enjoyable test in itself.
Most important is its impact on the way our media works and what it produces. Twitter gives equality of opportunity to those outside the old commentariat elite. It allows people to tailor their media intake for themselves, and for free. It prizes real value over the conjuring of a pompous façade. Bit by bit it is pulling down old, sputtering stars and raising up new ones. For all those reasons I not only love it – I realise why Will Self loathes it.
Tags: Culture, Jordan, Katie Price, Laurie Penny, Levellers, Media, Mehdi Hasan, New Statesman, opinion, Politics, Polly Toynbee, Socialists, The Moon, Tweet, Twitter, Will Self
Categories: Culture, Opinion, Politics
Mark – very good article. I started using Twitter with some trepidation and with some preconceptions about what to expect. Now – like you – I love it. I have just completed an MSc in Occupational Psychology and one of the unexpected positives of using Twitter is the access and speed it can give you to experts, articles and news in your chosen profession. It also offers on an almost daily basis very irreverent , highly amusing and thought provoking tweets from such a variety of people. Unless you start to absorb yourself in the world of Twitter it is very difficult to understand what it can offer you. I also think that there is a lack of awareness amongst non-users that your Twitter account is a very personalised forum. Twitter users are not all accessing the same tweets and individuals. Downsides – it is very addictive and can be very distracting!
29.03.2012 10:17
Since when have those on the left ever had to actually experience, or have knowledge of anything in order to criticise it? Ironically that is a feature of left wing rant-mob mentality on twitter that so many lefties get snowballed up in self-righteous indignation and boost twitter rants about subjects which they have no clue about. They will happily re-tweet any inane, myopic drivel which happens to support their own prejudice, especially if it supports their own prejudice. Finding out the truth of a situation never appears to cross their minds.
29.03.2012 11:18
I’m tempted to point out that by lumping all the left wing idiots together with the perfectly sane ones (ie, the majority), you’re displaying classic right wing behaviour
I mean – I don’t go comparing you to the BNP do I? (the debate for whether they’re actually a right wing party can be saved for another day!) Bloody righties!
29.03.2012 16:51
You ain’t kidding. Into the Florida Stand-Your-Ground case, the rather creepy luvvie Spook Lee interposeurs himself on behalf of the dead boy’s parents by Tweeting an incorrect address of the shooter, thus endangering an older couple who have nothing to do whatsoever with the case; this, after a black nationalist group had offered a bounty on the shooter’s head. I realise you were referring to the sort of intramural circle-jerk re-Tweeting of stuff that’s pretty harmless, but there’s a dark side to the phenomenon, and this is it.
29.03.2012 18:49
If you took up exercise you’d be able to squeeze between the rotating barrier and post thus not needing to pay for the loo.
29.03.2012 16:38
I am him
29.03.2012 17:02
Brilliant! We should all be Selfless.
31.03.2012 16:37