Exactly. The temptations are always there: to VENT AND TYPE FURIOUSLY on Facebook or Twitter in your postbox before hitting backspace to prevent any accidental status update. Or to passive-aggressively puncture someone with songlyrics appropriate to the difficult life situation (extra brownie points for socially acceptable lyrics, not those of Insania, no matter how in love with Katie Price you might be).
Twitter vs. Real Life Talking
Paloma Faith has recently fallen foul of this phenomena which might be classed as “Your Twitter Identity Must Be A Single, Easy To Read Identity At All Times And If You Dare Make Your Human Identity Complex By Tweeting Out Of Turn, You Will Be Dispapraged Or Judged.”
(Yeah obvs an acronym here would be pointless and more irritating than that overuse of capitals letters up there.) Anyway, in a moment of folly, Ms Faith tweeted on her profile:
“Please note: if I am on xmas holidays please do not ask me for a photo with you. my holidays end jan 5th”
Unexpectedly, she received a shipment load of tweets back which outlined the perhaps less savoury divaishness behind her telling quote. Observe:
Grace Dent: “@Palomafaith don’t worry love, I’m sure by Easter you’ll be wholly untroubled.”
The Sloppy Dog: If Paloma Faith doesn’t want to be spotted, maybe she should stop dressing like the result of a toilet roll cover mating with a Fraggle.
The term ‘Paloma Faith’ became a trending topic on the site for a few hours, before the Paloma fans picked up and showed some support:
Medialila: “I actually do like Paloma Faith. I don’t know why people are picking on her on Twitter, leave the poor girl alone!”
Sarah_L_B: “Awww Paloma Faith is trending! I love her album 🙂 No matter what you think of her as a person, she does make good songs :D”
Thewantedrhot: “tbh what paloma faith said wasn’t that bad, it was just to respect her privacy, even thou i don’t get why she deleted it afterwards :S”
As the trend started to die along with the pisstaking, there were a couple of sublime quotes such as these:
Stressed Derek: “Paloma Faith timeline: I wanna be famous! – I’M FAMOUS! – *dons shades* Stop taking photos of me – Please take photos of me – McDonalds.”
Southofkinross: “Oh. Paloma faith is on holiday- and said she doesn’t want pics with fans – surely the woman is allowed “private time.””
And of course, the bandwagon hitchhikers:
LewisM333: “Look at twitter once today and its filled with people slagging off paloma faith…am I too late?”
(cc) Sarah Durham
PALOMA ENDED UP DELETING HER TWEET, and then apologised.
“Sorry if I offended anyone tonight,” she posted. “I am a little tipsy.”
We have ever more transparent lives and willingly communicate them into coded symbols on a screen. Our opinions, the events we attend, the people and phrases we like, our innermost thoughts: everything is shared to a global audience, whether that be for ourselves, social(networking) approval, marketing or still trying to condense our little ideas from a big world, into a box on a screen.
Is it possible to offend people on Twitter?
This inevitably leads to some confusion. When the words typed into status boxes and Twitter boxes have the same importance as speech emitted from ourselves, then a slip of the wrist or tipsy confession may well serve an unintended purpose, even if one form of communication is traditionally more genuine than the other. For example, if your online presence is one of being zany yet down-to-earth, and suddenly you type something out of ‘character’, in come the accusations of being inconsistent, or worse – what is perceived to be showing your colours. But this is not really the case when written text and speech about ourselves are each constructed differently. We might be talking to fit in or admit a truth. We might be writing to do the same, or to construct an idea of ourselves that we want other people to believe.
The difference is biological too – information has to traverse the brain in different directions from one cortex to another in the case of written speech, and then for auditory speech. Nonetheless, the words’ intent might be the same across the board: to entertain, to express, to validate opinions of ourselves to others and back to ourselves. We are capable of creating a persona as much as we are destroying it.
…Oh. And sometimes, a bit of publicity is easily sought from judgemental users of social networking sites who can’t see through it all. Oops.
There is a mid level, conventionally good-looking but nonetheless very sweet American post-emo band The Starting Line, which has some fitting lyrics: “We reflect on miscommunications/and misunderstandings…Jumping to conclusions/Made me fall away…”
OK, maybe not in such melodramatic terms, but it is easily done. Let’s get the following fact sorted though:People, even famous ones, are not always identikit PR posters.
It’s easy to sound like a bit of dick in an online environment that constantly asks:
“WHAT’S HAPPENING?”
No, you’re happening. What are YOU DOING?
N.B. If you are like ‘Leighton Toast’ on Twitter and feel that you are: “sitting here actually dying of laughter at this girl tweeting everybody who is talking bad about paloma faith, gurrrrrl nobody cares”… then here’s an FYI. Paloma Faith is a woman well-impressive artistic calibre. A former magician’s assistant, she is a pop/soul singer who follows in the footsteps of Duffy and takes her own inspiration from Billie Holiday and Nina Simone, and famously performed at Glastonbury 2010 with two giant helium balloons with the cords attached to her back. She’s also been in many films including St. Trinians, and studied an MA in directing. She’s currently writing her second album. So you can do one. 😉
Culturegloss. 