The one-dimensional mind-fuck ~ Twitter or the brain?

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I’m a tweet addict; nothing else in the social media realm satisfy my curiosity than Twitter. It is not just about socialising, meeting new friends or even gathering information. It is about learning the psyche behind the avatar, the character. The avatar is not just a photo or a symbol of what the person portrays for public viewing, it carries an amusement park of personalities for my ever-hungry consumption.

Stalkers come in many disguises. Some are fantastically almost undetectable, while others are obvious and glaring to my sights. They move, mysteriously or with little fanfare, reading my tweets, my interactions with others. Their agenda for peeking is not really my concern, I welcome their curiosity, I welcome their attention.

Then you have your dose of friendly strangers, eager to tweet, or RT, and their intentions may or may not be clear. Nevertheless they appear to be friendly at first. Some would develop basic levels of friendship or one I would call, friendly acquaintance. As tweets continue, back and forth, communication is strengthened. Relaxation takes place, and the fingers on the keyboard types candidly as you tweet to each other.

What’s interesting about all this is the responses from people you think you know, and how in their own agenda or unstable views, they don’t see that tweet is somewhat a one-dimensional communication method. A tweet states a face but the reader may read it differently; miscommunication and misinterpretation happens frequently. A common flaw not on the one-dimensional flow of tweets, but more towards the flaws of our brain.

Our brain is a simple but enigmatic piece of equipment. It is responsible for many incredible feats. However I have noticed that when people are having a bad day, an overdose of hormones, or even in a confrontational mood, they will fabricate what they want to see, and what they want to hear. Their brain tells them everything and nothing.

I have had many ‘friends’ on twitter giving me multitude of advices and personal views of what they think is right and wrong especially when it affects my behaviour or what I had just tweeted. It is interesting that face-to-face conventional discussions would not normally lead to misunderstandings because your acquaintance happens to be in front of you – a living, breathing human being. Patience tempers their over-zealousness, sometimes. But in the twitter realm, patience is dead, tolerance is tortured and acceptance is readily thrown out of the window. People may appear to be friendly today and hostile next month.

I’m still trying to understand everything, I have unfollowed people due to their own unstable declaration of intent. Conflicting views are to be expected, however I don’t really tolerate hypocrites that allows their anxieties to dictate their logic and reasoning. Being unfriendly is definitely not a nice act. I’m not perfect, far from it, mind you, it is just that I would feel better when I know the sincerity of people. Even in the real world, I avoid consorting with hypocrites. Their infection of instability, on-or-offline, is bad for me, but worse for their self-esteem. I will continue using the unfollow and block functions when I encounter the lot, after all its not what I had tweeted ‘wrong’ that is the issue, it is the limited confinement of their own self-righteous views that I don’t want to be a part of.

Zashnain

An avid blogger, twitterer and photojournalist, Zashnain Zainal suffers from an incurable addiction to social work, helping marginalised communities since 1989. Nowadays he travels from the plantations of Malaysia to the slums of Thailand. He can be found at zashnain.com and @bedlamfury

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