After 10 years on Twitter, the love is going strong and growing
It’s free, democratic and more accessible than town halls, writes Martine St-Victor.
Were my smartphone to catch on fire, the app I would save is Twitter.
August will mark my 10th anniversary on the fastestmoving social media platform. A friend once described Twitter as a flowing river from which you get to take sips whenever you sign on. Seems like the perfect analogy, though recently Twitter has been more like a burning garbage truck because today’s current events have been so gloomy. Twitter is where news and current events break in real time.
It is also where culture shifts happen: #Lemonade, #ThisIsAmerica, #SLAV.
I joined Twitter in the summer of 2008, essentially to follow a young senator named Barack Obama. At that time, mainstream media had already coronated Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee for the impending presidential election. Junior journalists and bloggers were thus assigned to the guy with the unusual name.
In lieu of airtime during high viewership broadcasts, these juniors had Twitter, where they uploaded photos and grainy first-generation iPhone videos of Obama’s rallies. Where 500 people were expected, 2,500 showed up and they reported that. At that time, we on Twitter knew something was happening.
And Twitter is just that: where things happen.
Like Haiti’s earthquake a few years later. Twitter became essential. A lifeline to know, at every minute, what was happening and where. To know who had made it and, sadly, who we’d have to mourn.
Anxiety and sadness at our fingertips.
That’s also when part of my activism — that of making sure Haiti was spoken of fairly — found a bigger tribune.
Like correcting those who used the term “refugees” to describe displaced Haitians. Perhaps a small victory, but one that mattered and made its way to leading news organizations.
Twitter is where I fell in love with journalism all over again, discovering artisans of the fourth estate from all over the world who explained the often incomprehensible: #USElection2016, #Brexit, #LacMegantic.
Twitter has been the epicentre of movements anyone with an account could join or denounce: #ArabSpring, #BlackLivesMatter, #LoveWins.
And above the trolls and the petty tweet-fights, Twitter has often been a therapeutic circle where each of those sitting around a common hashtag share common grief and common memories while seeking and finding comfort: #RIPMichael, #RIPBowie, #RIPWithney, #RIPPrince, #RIPBourdain. And it is where many found and saw courage first-hand: #MeToo, #BeenRapedNeverReported.
Twitter is pop culture’s encyclopedia and a barometer of its angst, successes and controversies. Last September, the New York Times published an op-ed titled The Dying Art of Disagreement. Twitter is where it was partly killed.
Should you want to test that theory, tweet about how the P.K. Subban trade was nuts, and you’ll find out soon enough. I don’t like the polarization I see on Twitter, but it is a microcosm of what is happening in the “real world.” I don’t like the polarization here either.
Twitter predicts political trends and movements. It is a geopolitical pulse, and that’s part of the reason I’m so fond of it. It’s free, democratic and more accessible than town halls.
My wish for Twitter is that it continues to be used for good. That means its leadership can no longer turn a blind eye to hate speech and harassment on the platform.
Twitter can make things better by shining a light on things, people and injustices that shouldn’t be kept in the dark: #MissingWomen, #FreeRaif, #TrayvonMartin. May Twitter remain a tool for accountability, checks and balances and may it continue to be the borderless great connector it is.
My top two Twitter rules: Curate your Twitter feed carefully.
■ It should enrich your everyday life, not make you reach for the Xanax. So, ultra-conservative commentator @AnnCoulter? Nope. But @WebsterMerriam? Yes!
If a news article or op-ed
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enrages you, don’t retweet it. When you do, it compensates its author, one way or another.