THE WORLD IN 140 CHARACTERS
Twitter has morphed from a fun house of gossip and weirdness into a more serious business, writes Pearl Boshomane
ON Tuesday at 10.08am, South African jazz singer Tutu Puoane tweeted: “Grateful to my ancestors for making me fly the day before today.”
Puoane, who lives in Antwerp in Belgium, was commenting on the suicide bombing at Brussels airport.
Ten years ago, when the cofounder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, created an internal communication service for a podcast company, he could not have known it would become a pivotal means of communication for 320 million users globally.
And 7.4 million of these Twitter users are in South Africa (13 million locals have made it onto social media giant Facebook).
Seven years ago, people like Khaya Dlanga — then primarily known as a blogger and now a bestselling author — had maybe a few thousand followers, which made him one of the cool kids of South African Twitter. Today he has more than 284 000.
Dlanga is one of the few popular local tweeters who has managed to reinvent himself to keep up with the changes on Twitter.
No longer a primary source of amusement and self-expression, a place where people could say whatever they wanted with few or no consequences, where they could be sexist, racist or homophobic and get away with it, Twitter is not the fun house it used to be.
“Bring back the days when Twitter was fun,” has appeared a lot on my timeline lately.
So when did Twitter, the social network that lets us run our own polls but still doesn’t have an “edit” function, stop being “fun”? Locally, sometime in the past year, when movements such as #RhodesMustFall and hashtags like #RhodesSoWhite started trending over sexist hashtags such as #IfSheCantCook (tagging hundreds of disparaging tweets from mainly men about women who fail in the kitchen).
It’s silly of those who miss Twitter’s “good old days” to expect zero evolution from a social network whose immediacy and format are so reflective of its time. The 140-character maximum for each tweet is not only suitable for those with a short attention span, it is also indicative of the fast-paced lives most of its users lead.
Twitter is all about what’s hot and what’s trending now.
From activist hashtags such as #Kony2012 (remember the video about Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony?) to #BringBackOurGirls (the schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram in Nigeria), there has always been an element of social conscience to the network.
But it was most probably US Twitter’s #BlackLivesMatter that showed how much power a hashtag could truly have.
What started as online reaction to the killings of black people at the hands of white police officers is now an actual, tangible organisation (not to mention a global movement).
According to University of Johannesburg student and blogger Luyanda Mafanya, social media “has given power to students by circumventing conventional media with its immediacy”.
“Twitter has allowed us to see the real journey of the #FeesMustFall protest,” said Mafanya.
Sinenhlanhla Ngxukume, a student at the University of the Witwatersrand, spoke of “a race renaissance in South Africa”, saying: “The wounds of apartheid are still open . . . Being able to talk about it, especially on a social platform like Twitter, which is accessible to many, has inspired us to start talking about race and other inequalities.”
Now many discussions are spearheaded by more public figures, people such as writers Pumla Dineo Gqola, Thando Mgqolozana and Panashe Chigumadzi, and musician Simphiwe Dana.
But it’s not as though political correctness has sucked all of the fun out of Twitter. Celebrities can be just as “spicy” (wicked in a humorous or entertaining way) as the rest of us, and it’s fun to see them tweeting about one another without mentioning names, or to see them occasionally lose their minds and go on Twitter rants that must give their PR teams a headache.
Stars who are cyber-bullied use Twitter to hit back. Bonang Matheba is famous for simply blocking her haters, while Pearl Thusi recently shamed the women who attacked her Metro FM awards hairdo by sharing their own less-than-flattering profile pictures.
Maybe calling people out when they tweet problematic things isn’t as entertaining as tweeting about Our Perfect Wedding, but social media is no longer a virtual world that has no connection to real life: it’s a place where people seek or offer jobs, where lovers meet, where useful information is shared.
It’s a reflection of what democracy should be: a place where everyone can share their opinions — and face the consequences (remember, rights come with responsibilities).
Is it a perfect model? Of course not. People always have their pitchforks ready in case someone tweets something that violates the rules of Woke Twitter (tweeters who are sociopolitically aware, feminist, prochoice and subscribe to intersectionality).
Sometimes their censorship can be a bit much, but since when is it a problem to hold people accountable for their actions?
So when did Twitter stop being ‘fun’? Locally, sometime in the past year