Jun 29, 2009
Trending Topics, Bigotry & Noise on Twitter
It seems Twitter is officially not for geeks anymore. This has been the case for some time. But Twitter early adopters got smacked in the face with it during Monday night’s BET Awards show. I started to comment on Black Web 2.0′s post BET Awards Dominate Twitter, Causes Racist Backlash when I realized I was getting long-winded.
While the criticism of Twitter trending topics is not new, it was interesting to see the reaction to the BET dominated list last night. Some comments bordered on being racist while others went ahead and crossed it. In short, nothing new under the sun in terms of race relations.
See also this tweet by my man @dykc:
Some of the non-racial backlash to trending topics stems from self-appointed, social network gatekeepers attempting to dictate how others should use Twitter. I’ve seen this type of conversation pop up on FriendFeed as well (I’ll write about my issues experience with that service at another time).
Still, I’m amazed so many user seem genuinely ignorant of the intrinsic function of trending topics. It’s what the majority of people are “talking” about on Twitter. That’s it. Sometimes those topics happen not to be news, political issues, startups, or your latest app.
I’m not interested in most of the trending topics either. I also don’t base my use of Twitter on that list. Ideally, topics of interest to you should be something driven by your followees/followers.
Directly related, is the concept of “noise” on Twitter which has more to do with how a user configures their account than actual messages being broadcast. If you only want to know about news-related items, science, technology, etc., you should only follow Twitter accounts dedicated to those topics.
If you follow regular, well-rounded people on Twitter, you’ll see those tweets interspersed with comments about celebrity deaths, award shows, sports, and any number of daily memes.
If you’re bent out of shape over trending topics or noise on Twitter, clean up your follower list or use a Twitter client that allows you to group or filter, such as Tweedeck or FriendFeed. It’s not rocket science.
A few days ago, someone on Friendfeed made the comment that people fail to realize just how individualized people’s online experiences can be. There seems to be this idea that what happens online is universal (and deracinated), when those of us in the know certainly know better.
Thanks for reminding me, C. I saw that FriendFeed thread. It was started by Rasheen and is one of the few threads that really address my frustrations with that service.
Thanks for addressing this. I’m so appauled and disappointed by these racist tweets! I refuse to use Twitter again, sorry it’s the activist in me.
Bravo!
The other interesting piece to me — and it’s not about race — is about my own individualized experience. I am very rarely on the twitter site so I hardly ever see the trending topics of the moment. It’s only when there is an article about it or someone notes it that I go look.
It seems so weird to me and the way I roll online that someone would spend a lot of time actively looking at the twitter website and it’s on-site features. And then react to it in some meaningful way.
But I don’t use twitter to keep up with the global zeitgeist. It’s just where my friends and acquaintances hang out.
Me too. Sometimes I hear about people being into that stuff, and I think, well, that’s WEIRD. And it goes back to Cecily’s excellent point, because the people who are into that stuff probably think the way *I* use social media is weird!
Not sure where this phenomenon of (ahem) “thought leaders” projecting their experience onto everyone as if it’s some kind of universal came from, but it’s damn annoying.
Mika, I’m curious about your decision to stop using twitter. By all accounts, the founders/owners of the service aren’t racist or bigoted, some of their users are.
We wouldn’t protest the telephone or e-mail even though racists and worse use those services.
Why would you deny yourself a useful communication tool?
@Jason. You could not be more correct! And I have since changed my mind about deleting Twitter altogether. It was just an irrational decision based on emotions.
I actually contacted one of the “racists” through Twitter and she has since made a public apology and even changed her account name so that she won’t be associated with such behavior. Thanks for your comment. ~Mika