15 years ago | Chamberlains Farm, Shevington Moor, UK | 4th February 2009

Fifteen years ago, in a moment of curiosity, I decided, for a couple of reasons to double my ‘social footprint’. I’d already been on Facebook for over a year but I reached the point where I also wanted to test the water in its edgier alternative: Twitter. If you’re interested, here’s my profile.

I can’t believe it’s now fifteen years since I signed up to a website that has delighted and disgruntled me in equal measure. A site which has allowed me to converse with my heroes and has, all too often, become the refuge of some absolute villains. Concerningly, all the signs are that this will continue to worsen.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Back in 2009, Twitter was still a quirky, collaborative neighbourhood of mainly community-spirited people. #FF (Follow Friday) was not a marketing gimmick but a communally-upheld sense of duty that we should all share weekly recommendations for accounts which deserved to be followed.

Early celebrity adopters helped to add some allure to the medium, particularly Stephen Fry, who addressed his audience as ‘tweeps’. For a brief moment, it was an online Nirvana. And then it became too popular. Looking back, its subsequent crossover towards the popular could also be traced as the beginning of Twitter’s descent into more mainstream problems.

I remember making a very conscious effort to choose who I was (and was not) going to follow. Yes my interests of sports and music were reflected in my feed but I also wanted the ‘inside track’ on the news. For that reason, I chose a list of journalists whom I felt were credible and followed them. I followed all the credible news outlet accounts I could find. I also deliberately chose to follow outlets and journalists I felt were across the spectrum.

Consequently, I soon realised that I would very often find myself watch TV news bulletins, thinking to myself ‘I’ve already heard about this’, giving me a sense that Twitter, if used properly, can act as a more instant news source.

But as Denzel Washington once famously observed about news coverage, being ‘first’ is not more important than being ‘right’. There are reasons why major stories generally break as they do, with hype eventually giving way to analysis. Anyone can point a camera at a crash site but it takes time to understand what really happened.

I also remember choosing to do something that almost no-one does, but the value of which I learned as a teenager: look out news sources with which you expect to disagree. I can’t stress strongly enough how important this is. It always was important but in today’s personalised media landscape, it’s more vital than ever to understand the world beyond the construct you prefer to believe it to be.

Many years ago, when I was an A-level student, lamenting my choice of Maths & Statistics as one of my courses, I would do anything to avoid having to struggle through another round of homework on calculus or Poisson distribution, so I read every newspaper in the college library. I messed up the A-level but I gained a priceless appreciation of how a partisan media can distort the facts they report, to suit their agenda. Consequently, I believe Media Studies, for so long a ‘joke’ subject, which equips its students to understand how to tell legitimate lies – and therefore how to identify when it happens – is now more important to providing a meaningful education to all than “core” subjects like Maths.

Twitter (I’m never going to call it anything else), even in the nefarious hands of its Pound Shop Tony Stark kidnapper is still a wonderful resource because its worth lies not in its own intrinsic value but in the connections it still provides to those who can add value and insight. Or, in other words, it all depends on who you follow. Ask any developer and the old maxim still applies: ‘Shit In, Shit Out”.

I’ve flirted with Mastodon and Threads and I wouldn’t be surprised if my head is turned by BlueSky but for the time being, I’m happy to persevere with Twitter. My best day on there was when I shared a joke with Eric Idle and he re-tweeted it. The place may not have become everything we’d hoped for. It might even be a piece of shit, when you look at it, but Eric’s old maxim still applies here, as much as it always did: “Always look on the bright side of life”.