The Twitlight Zone

katharsisdrill (71)in #twitter • 9 years ago (edited)

Sometimes it happens. You move to the outer fringes of your safe zone - ventures into uncharted lands, the realm of the savages, the punks, the rednecks, the underground, the minority wilderness, the projects.

To me it is the other way round.

For the last 5-6 years I have only frequented the underground venues, the small fringed social cyber-medias like Diaspora, the dark corners of my own apartment. I have shied mainstream, burned all bridges back to the institution. So when I joined Twitter two days ago it was a bit of an uncanny experience.

I had joined the Twitlight Zone.

The first impression of Twitter was that it went very, very fast. I had, like you do on new social media, added 20 profiles or so just to get started, and they flooded my feed instantly. It was like a wild torrent of jokes, profanity, CGI advises and brexit-worry. I wrote my first tweet ever - slightly - well thoroughly - defensive. Then a retweet - then another tweet with the latest page of my comic - just to keep up (well I only made the damn twittercount to promote it) - then I had to retweet a couple of more tweets before my head got under the water and I had to swallow a lot of Boing Boing. I tweeted - I went under again...

detail from "A Descent into the Maelstrom" - by Arthur Rackham

The next morning I sat down at my computer to finish Phill from GCHQ-page 14. And logged re-log-tantly into Twitter again. I had decided to do this! It was for the greater good of my webcomic wusn't it? Is not all artists just prostitutes? YES, they are! (and I should know as I 'ave known a few). Nice people from Steemit had started following me @alienbutt, @ervin-lemark, @stellabelle, @shortcut, @richardjuckes, and @mikkolyytinen.

I jumped in.

Instantly the torrent grabbed me, threw me around, pulled me under. I should add here that I have actually tried to prepare for this by signing up on Quitter the decentralised Twitter, but the raging of the real mainstream calamity was = Quitter¹⁰⁰. One thing was at least the same. There was the same amount of anime-perverts in my feed. I don't really know how they get there, but at least they tend to lighten my spirits a bit. They are from the same weird cyber-outskirts as me. (The reason they are also on Quitter is that there is no censoring, so they can post all the sick hentai they want...)

I am not really sure how to link or explain this... was in my twitter-feed.

Anyways... I didn't really feel good about logging in today, but did it anyway to post something about my comic. Page 14 is almost finished and I guess you guys will have it today, so I might as well get wet in the twitter-ocean now. It also fascinates me: all these people shouting into the empty void in hope of some connection.

I like tragedy.

All social media have this strange feel. People shouting, pledging for attention - Steemit is no better (here the strange auto-stimulation you get if or when the robot-upvote-satisfiers pop by - actually have a little monetary---ish value.) I always get to think of the test-rats that knocked themselves out on the brain-satisfaction button and died of hunger, when I attend social media, but Twitter just boosted this gloomy sentiment to new height...