Social Networking On The Web: It Looks Like A Dead End Street

November 9, 2009

Dan Majestic writes: Are we a humorous website or what? And are we here to entertain the masses, and offend some people along the way, or are were here to be boring and repeat what others say, over and over again? Who knows, and those who do will not tell us.

Anyway, twitter has been in the news recently. Or at least some people I know have been telling me that this was the case. Words of praise were said and comparisons were made that, quite frankly, sounded bizarre. How about twitter shaping public opinion, influencing political events and opening the gates for ordinary people to express their points of view freely?

One idea that has been expressed is that twitter, supposedly, ignited pro-democracy protests in Iraq following the recent presidential elections after the mad mullahs had imposed their restrictions on the media coverage inside the country and even blocked the mobile network. The protestors, as the story went, used twitter to spread the word about the demonstrations in Tehran and stayed in touch with each other and the rest of the world.

It all smacks of wishful thinking. The thing about Iran is that there are two opposing powerful groups within the regime that are battling it out for all that oil money. Democracy, to be honest, is just about the last thing that preoccupies them. The people on the streets of Tehran may have been under an illusion that there are some deeply committed democrats in the political establishment, who want to see Iran adopting a Western style democracy, but unfortunately they were wrong. We know what happened when they tried to introduce reforms in Iran last time under the Shah: the punishment was swift. So no chance of that happening in the next hundred years or so for sure.

So how did twitter fit into all of this? Well, some overly excited individuals posted their opinions and the usual suspects – the ones who spend half of their lives on the Internet – picked them up and made a song and dance out of them. And the result? None, actually. The mullahs are still where they were and the so-called ‘democrats’ are licking their wounds, waiting for another opportunity to have a go at changing the status quo.

And as regards that other big furore on twitter that supposedly demonstrated people’s power on the web, the campaign against the hack Joan Moir of the daily Mail stable, it was rather pathetic actually. Moir had had written a piece about the sudden death of Stephen Gately, an irrelevant pop singer, questioning the verdict that he succumbed to ‘natural causes’ and hinting that it could have been his lifestyle that brought on his demise. Most of the people who expressed their outrage on twitter obviously did not even read the article in question and had absolutely no idea what it was about. They just simply went with the flow and got carried away by the excitement of the moment. Anything to get out of their boring routine.

If anyone bothers to go on twitter and have a quick look at the so-called ‘trending topics’ that reflect the interests of the majority of people tweeting on it they would find that the overwhelming numbers are just killing time and posting absolute rubbish. You might even catch yourself thinking that these guys are on something.

This whole social networking on the web has a lot to do with marketing propaganda, helping to plug films and albums and books and software and PC games and porn and loads of other things. And twitter is no different in this respect. You might say that social intercourse is not exactly its strongest point. It is mostly about people plugging stuff and trying to get your email address logged in to pass it to some crazed marketing fanatics who would then bombard you with their with stupid promos and offers.

I suspect that social networking on the web has already peaked and will start to die out. The main problem with it is that the flood gates have been opened on people who really don’t have anything to say of any relevance. They just register their state of mind, if mind is the right word here, and pollute the system. This sort of social networking probably has no future. It resembles one huge loony bin, if you ask me. It is a waste of time, but mercifully not a waste of paper and trees. It’s about as exciting as watching a Woody Allen film or episode after episode of the abysmal TV ‘classic’, Friends.

The Internet, my friends, is mostly about marketing and advertising. At least 80 per cent of it. The rest is probably about intercourse, but mostly not of the conversational type.

– End –

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