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Media World
07 February 2010 By Catherine O'Mahony
I’m on Twitter, in my latest effort to cast off my Luddite shackles.
Those who are in the know say Twitter is getting to be old hat.
They’re keen on things like Foursquare and other stuff I don’t fully understand, but which sound fairly irritating – for now. It is frustrating, but I will persevere. You have to make a start, so here it is.
This happened with Facebook too. I managed to find my way onto it and worked out how to upload pictures and was then told by those in the know that Facebook was ‘‘for old people’’, blogging was ‘‘boring’’ and tweeting was now the hip thing.
Now Twitter is also apparently not quite the thing, which still leaves me and others like me several steps behind the whole digital insider brigade.
It’s strange how some of us still hold out so stubbornly for so long against new technologies.
Only when a substantial number of people we know – and think to be relatively sane – adopt something do we feel safe to follow suit.
While I’m mortified at my social media shortcomings, many people – media types included – still appear rather proud not to have a clue what it all means.
There is still plenty of kudos in many circles, it seems, in being more of a book/newspaper person or a let’s-have-a-chat over coffee person than a Tweeter. The thing is, it’s a bit of a pointless pose because we all know from experience that social media will get us in the end.
Back in 1991, when I had a junior job in a London publishing company, I was sent out to get bagels for lunch and queued behind a man carrying the sort of plus sized ‘mobile’ phone that was the only sort available those days.
When his turn came he dialled back to his office on this brick-like gadget and roared: ‘‘DID YOU SAY CHEESE AND PEPPERONI?"
After a brief stunned silence, everyone else in the large queue engaged in some audible tuttutting and exasperated eyeball rolling at this embarrassing carry-on.
Five years later, we were all at it. Once we hated e-mail too, and we said texting was for kids.
Who can still avoid them?
Even the fogey-ish Tubridy Show tweets.
All this is really more of a pep talk to myself to get on with it.
Come 2015, almost certainly, even the Most Determinedly Late Adopters will be tweeting with the best of them. Why not just cut out the five years of complaining and do it now?
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