Twitter has been great for journalists short on scoops. Real-time they can be linked up to celeb Twitter feeds and create stories out of their every tweet. Cricketer Kevin Pietersen was recently fined by the English cricket board for tweeting unpleasant comments about Sky Commentator Nick Knight while Manchester United footballer Federico Macheda was likewise fined for tweeting homophobic tweets – mere tweets leading to hundreds of articles across hundreds of newspapers and other media.
But few have noticed why Twitter is truly beautiful...
Surely I’m not the only victim of Internet pests who has seen them move their poison from blog-writing to tweets? Watching Internet stalkers and pests ditching their self-hate in minute-by-minute publishing fixes on Twitter is fantastic. Search engines don’t bother picking up Tweets. They can create their own island communities (in my case, my stalkers use all sorts of fake Twitter accounts to delude themselves into thinking over a thousand people are really receiving their tweets!) and then pitch crap at them all day.
Twitter’s actual successes – acting as a catalyst for the Arab Spring and its ability through celebrity errors to penetrate the mainstream press – have convinced deluded internet pests that Twitter is where it’s at. Twitter – these twisted weirdoes figure – is a punch by the minute nirvana where their victims are actually watching.
What Internet stalkers don’t realise is that as soon as they move onto Twitter and get addicted by the false sense of community they think exists on the site, their victims breathe a huge sigh of relief. Weblogs get found by search engines and have to be explained away to those conducting due diligence on you – Twitter is, err, the home of Twit.
Dominic Wightman is the Editor of the Westminster Journal.
