Why Do I Feel The Need To “Tweet”?
by Maurizio Bisogno 2015
I have this idea, I am excited about it, I think it is true, then I have this urge to share it.
I don’t get anything back. Maybe the hope that someone will “re-tweet” it or favourite it. That is the aim. In this way I hope to become more popular.
This is also ridiculous, isn’t it? I often think that a better practice would be to write my ideas in my own file, then when I have written enough, I would put them together in a book and self-publish it. Then, to make the book known, I would start twittering about it.
There is another aspect of twittering: when you tweet your thoughts you can see which ideas or expression of ideas have some kind of reactions or not. You are not closed in your own private world.
On the other hand, the more I think about this twittering, the more I believe that it is a way to suck energy and ideas from you as much as possible. Who actually takes advantage, who benefits from all this twittering around?
But there is another aspect of my twittering activity: it is to attract people who eventually would buy my ebooks, although I must say that it is not working very well and I don’t know why. None of my internet activities produces a real income. What do I do wrong? Is my expectation to make a living with the sales of my ebooks a realistic one? My immediate answer is: NO! So why do I keep insisting? Because I am in a trap, a psychological trap that is.
The fact that there are numerous people who use Twitter for establishing a network base on which to build or develop their business, strangely it is not working for me; or am I the only delusional one?
Apparently and especially in the Middle East and Northern Africa, Twitter is an actual way to support the work of activist groups and in some cases it is a question of life and death for them. The world of journalism also uses Twitter in quite an essential way to the point that the you can read this:
“Sofia Bak @So_BFM Apr 26
“There’s no way a journalist can be successful without knowing how to use Twitter” – @DaveWedge#TwitterRevolution#SocialMedia
Image and identity.
In a recent survey/study I read that there are two major basic motivations for people to tweet and keep tweeting, excluded those who have commercial/professional reasons. Here is the paragraph:
“These results suggest that both types of motivation are at play: some users have an intrinsic motivation primarily to broadcast to the world, while another group of users has a more image-conscious, status-seeking motivation. At the same time, their model suggests that image-related motivation is stronger for most users.” [ref.:http://www.msi.org/articles/why-do/ , Why Do People Contribute Content to Twitter? Sept, 27, 2013]
What we see at play here are the following motivations:
1. intrinsic motivation primarily to broadcast to the world
2. a more image-conscious, status-seeking motivation
where the image related motivation is the strongest.
In one articles, “I Tweet Therefore I Am”, the clinical psychologist Oliver James stated that “Twittering stems from a lack of identity”. He further goes on to say that “no one would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity“.
“Twittering … It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.”
“We are the most narcissistic age ever,” agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. “Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognise you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won’t cure it.”
For Alain de Botton, author of Status Anxiety and the forthcoming The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, Twitter represents “a way of making sure you are permanently connected to somebody and somebody is permanently connected to you, proving that you are alive.”
[gawker.com/5158699/i-tweet-therefore-i-am]
Whatever is the reason of your twittering activity, the company Twitter is worth $230 million, according to its investors, and this is the correct answer to the question previously asked: Who actually takes advantage, who benefits from all this twittering around?
By providing content to the social networks you may be trying to fill some kind of psychological void, or wanting to fulfil a psychological need but what do you get in return?
All those social networks obey to the law of profit, they are part of that industry of “QUICK FIXES” so efficient in providing them and making huge profit out of people misery.
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