Twitter Doctrine

My father once told me that it is good to make a few enemies. This man now in his 8th decade has always held unequivocal views, a man who has blocked out what would be described today as a traumatic childhood and has lived his life based on a moral code, constructed solely with the tool of his own nature. He can look you in the eye with just the faintest of smiles and pronounce that “the worst thing that this country ever did was give women the vote”! He can tell his Grandson that a con man is someone that gives you confidence! He can say that we all have prejudice. He can tell me that it is better in life to slam the door shut and walk away than be reasonable and leave it slightly ajar. He has told me this many times in his matter of fact way, but I have never really listened, preferring to analyse and debate the pros and cons of such an act, striving to come to a conclusion that is fair, reasonable and balanced to all concerned, as this is my nature.
My father certainly woulds’t approve of Twitter, he generally grumbles that there is too much second rate opinion in traditional media as it is, so why would you want even more? The egos that frequent Twitterworld are huge of course and everyone is a sage and a prophet in their own mind but that is all understood and generally accepted so for every inane one word post of “meh” or vital information imparted as “I have a headache” there are numerous intelligent, witty nuggets to counter any accusation that my father might throw. Furthermore you can stumble into a recommendation that could change your life to a lesser or greater degree, you can witness random acts of kindness or take part in a debate that could further your understanding or make you see things in a whole new way and make new friends or you might just see a picture that makes you smile, all of this is possible so even if there is shameless self promotion there is also a lot to be said for Twitter. However my positivity has been somewhat tempered by a recent event.

My eyes were drawn to a tweet recently from a woman who was describing her domestic scene. She was listening to her baby crying and although she knew she was a “bad mummy” she would not go to her child but wait for it to fall asleep and low and behold 5 minutes later she pronounced with another triumphant tweet that the infant slept. Now maybe it was because of the bad day I was experiencing or maybe it was because of the small amount of alcohol coursing through my veins (always to be avoided on Twitter) but I took exception to this. I have two sons of my own, now both taller than myself but I vividly remember pacing up and down at 4am in the morning with a babe in arms, chanting made up American Indian songs as for some reason my interpretation of Apache seemed to have a soothing effect. Of course we all have our own way of bringing up our kids and we all learn as we go, hoping that our fumbling attempts at parenthood prepares our offspring for the adult world, (which I understand is now reached at the age of 9). So even though I disagreed with the fact that a baby was left to cry itself to sleep, this was of course the mothers choice, I just felt the need to ask this person in what I thought was a perfectly polite way why she had found it necessary to share the baby’s discomfort and her apparent guilt with the world. What was her purpose in putting this information in the public domain? A reasonable enough question I thought.
The response was that my message was “nasty and I didn’t have to follow her” and then some damage limitation followed through various tweets to her buddies saying how horribly she had been treated. We both then predictably hit the unfollow button, doors slammed and life continued, but does this mean that our little worlds of followed and followers are just there to perpetuate a shared set of beliefs and that any mildly dissenting voice is seen as the enemy within, a threat to be swiftly eradicated. If so then maybe the Internet is not so empowering after all. Does a critical opinion automatically attract a derogatory response, do we just want to talk to clones of ourselves?
Is another consequence of this circling of the wagons a growing trend for us to lose the ability to self regulate, have we lost the little voice inside that says “actually no I’m not going to write this down, I shall keep this thought to myself, as not everything is for public consumption and even though I have the right to say whatever I like, I will exercise constraint”. Perhaps I should have bitten my lip myself and left her in peace to play to her gallery, perhaps this is all a bit melodramatic, an over reaction to an isolated incident, but in the last few days I have noted a few other similar instances that would suggest that a new doctrine is being formed and perhaps this is just part of a potentially more sinister development because the question I cant help asking myself is; did this person let her baby cry to demonstrate to the world an example of tough love or was her sole motivation to manufacture a situation so she could write about it on Twitter?