I’m slowly but surely honing down my area of interest for my PhD. I know it’s going to involve a creative project aspect and a critical piece. I’m incredibly intrigued by the possibilities of creating fiction for and on twitter. The challenge of writing on the fly, the performance art aspect of doing it real time, in front of real-time readers, the interaction that happens when I tweet, the bouts of creativity that we seem to inspire in each other. For me this blows away the boundaries of producer and consumer. It challenges the very core of our concepts of meaning making and the imprecision of language. It brings life experience, culture and our understanding of self to the forefront.
I’ve always been a writer on the web. I’ve never thought of writing as a solitary or isolating pursuit specifically because of the possibilities that the web has to offer in terms of interaction and iteration. However, posting to a blog doesn’t have the immediacy or visceral real-time interaction that twitter can provoke. So part of my fascination and hopefully the focus of the critical portion of my doctorate will – hopefully – be on how these elements redefine the idea of writing, fiction, and single-writership. It takes the idea of narrative performance to the wall. For me, it really does turn writing from being a one-way act into a full on dialogue.
For this purpose, I need to understand who you are. How you see yourselves in this medium and what roles you write for yourselves…when you come to the twitter timeline and become the better half of what I do.
The question I asked on the timeline in twitter was:
On a scale from 1/5: How close does the personality you wear on twitter represent the real-world you? 1 (not at all) to 5 (exactly the same)
Twitter, being the beast it is, didn’t really allow me to elaborate on what I meant by ‘real-world’. I wasn’t asking how genuine you are on twitter, or how much of who you really are you show. I was asking how much your twitter persona differs from the persona you wear on a daily basis.
Some people have the luxury of being almost wholly themselves in their daily life. Others, like me, have to be a little more circumspect and measured about our interests, opinions and behaviours. So I’m really asking about the difference between the role you play on twitter, and the one you play on a day to day basis with people face to face.
If you could have a think about it, do the poll and then feel free to leave any comment you want on how you feel that twitter extends, or mitigates, or allows you to act differently, I’d really appreciate it.
[poll id=”2″]
I’ll pony up first, because that’s only fair. I figure that I’m about a 2.5. I’ve really quite different on twitter than I am day to day. I’m more outgoing and social. Much more likely to express my honest feelings. And a hell of a lot smuttier.
The second poll is about creativity and whether you feel that twitter allows / encourages / supports you being more or less creative than in your everyday life. I know a lot of people on twitter who, for instance, write poetry, but would never call themselves a poet in their spacial, everyday world. Perhaps because, for instance, in the mainstream world, poets don’t get a lot of respect. They’re often portrayed in mainstream media and literature as being flakey or effeminate. Whereas, from what I’ve perceived on Twitter, it’s almost exactly the opposite. Poetry is a very respected form of communication on twitter.
In any case, no matter how you express your creativity: in word, or drawing, or video, or even in philosophical thought or political debate, please think about it and consider taking this second poll.
[poll id=”3″]
If you have taken the time to consider and answer these questions, thank you, thank you, thank you! And again, your thoughts, or criticisms, additions to the dialogue are much appreciated. Please feel free to comment.
I have spent my life being me
no other way can I be
I came to Twitter looking for something.. and along the way found more of me :~)
Reaching out and connecting on a world wide scale… and believe me the law of attraction works better than you could ever imagine. What you think, what you write, reflects and draws to you , in day to day life, in dreams and most definitly on twitter.
If you are a phony… that’s what follows you
how you interact with the world is up to you
and too many of us really don’t see that the world mirrors what we send out
and oh yes poetry… sharing our souls….in words….help us all express ourselves and allow others to say…”ya I feel like that too !”
have a fabulous day
see you out there
I wonder how long it will be before they have robust undergraduate & more advanced degrees in social media?
My personality on Twitter is identical to what I’m like IRL. I am a bit more open about some things on Twitter and my blog, even though they’re often clouded to mask my identity, location, and MO. I do think it foments creativity on my part because it exposes me to people all over the planet, as you say in real time, that I can bounce ideas off of and react to, etc. It also allows me to see how others are discussing topics I’m interested in and there’ve been cases where my opinion on some subject has changed because of ideas I’ve been exposed to that I likely would not have seen/noticed otherwise.
I chose 4, because though I am also more outgoing on Twitter than irl, it is not by much. Before discovering inter net community in the late 90s I was a shy and guarded person, but over time I learned more about interacting with others from the Internet and that had an impact on my offline life as well.
For me Twitter is a bit of a stew. So many people using it in different ways and glimpses in to the creative lives of others. It reminds me to be more physically and intellectually active 🙂 the immediacy of contact and the ability to reach out directly to others (ie. Thank an author for the book I just read, and receive a reply) encourages people both to create, and to comment on the creations of others.
I don’t think it’s limited to Twitter, I think that on-line I feel more free to express myself, to be honest without fear, than in ‘Real Life’. Intellectually, I feel that’s silly, and that there *shouldn’t* be any difference, but still, there is.
As for the creativity question, I’m not sure if it’s Twitter or the people I interact with ON Twitter that make me feel more creative.
Actually, I take that last bit back – it’s you (plural) who are being supportive, not the methods by which that support is provided, that make the difference.
Is it possible to separate twitter from the people who are on it who you talk to? I can’t see how they can really be separated. However, of course, I mean twitter including the group of followers and friends you have on it.
Ha ha.I’m not a stalker. Don’t think that please. I’m an insomniac and I try to communicate. this morning – This morning, early, early – I was bloated. and tried to answer correctly. Pero mi inglés es hormonal y a veces una mierda.
I found interesting that you asked here,
of course I do to interact on Twitter, it looks a bit typing on a global one exquisite body: Cadaver exquisito, and sometimes increases.como el carajo mi creativity. I do not use Twitter as a journalist, tampoco mi blog: but as crador, as blogger, as fucker.
Digo, Gracias y eso y lo otro y todo lo contrario es azul
and if I understand, I apologize for my insolence English
Translation for the non-Spanish speakers:
Pero mi ingl̩s es hormonal y a veces una mierda РMy English is hormonal and sometimes shitty.
el carajo mi creativity – my fucking creativity
tampoco mi blog – nor as my blog
Digo, Gracias y eso y lo otro y todo lo contrario es azul – so thank you. This and that and everything else is blue.
For many reasons both personal and professional, I fragmented my life into 3 distinct one-faceted personalities for the twittersphere. (As I’m sure most people can relate to…) I am entirely myself on twitter, but reserve only those qualities of myself that are relevant to a particular persona, so, for instance, I will never talk about my music as Maggie, and I will never conduct business as Maggie and thus do not end up ‘spamming’ my friends.
Great article and poll!! I second Alexa’s question of when social media will become a professional pursuit of pedantic proportions. 😛
I’m off to follow you, my dear. *v..v*
The real world ‘you’ depends, surely, on the situation. You don’t interact with the bank manager or tiresome tax man in the same way you would with an intimate, a lover or a therapist: you certainly don’t tell the tax man ‘exactly’ what you think of them – but you would tell friends. Most of us have to be more or less inhibited in our daily dealings with ‘third parties’. The anonymity of Twitter allows, but doesn’t necessitate, less inhibition. The creative potential of Twitter, performing before a live audience yet remaining ‘hidden’ from them could well facilitate many (shy) people who otherwise would have no outlet for their talents.
Good luck!
Twitter (once I created a persona that wasn’t being followed by my daughters, LOL) has allowed me to express myself much more naturally. That in turn has impacted my real-world relations with people. So if anything, I’ve become more like my twitter personality, and less reserved. It’s also (and I’ve heard this from others) caused me to feel better about merging the different faces I present IRL into a single one which is more truly me. If that means losing some friends, it also means gaining others—people to whom I can comfortably express what I feel.
Twitter has also had a huge impact on my writing. It’s has helped me focus on the phrases that have the most impact, and discard the rest. The positive (and critical) feedback from the folks who read (or listen to) what I post has also been very helpful in encouraging me. The only detriment is that I now find it hard to write a sentence longer than 140 characters. 🙂
Very interesting discussion this, and one that taps into something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. In fact, had I answered your questions as recently as a month ago I’d probably given a different pair of answers.
While I’m relatively new to twitter (and I’ve not been active on the net in general for much longer) I’ve found myself censoring my thoughts, second guessing everything I type. I’m pretty open and embarresment proof in ‘real life’ but for some reason the thought of people I don’t know laughing at me or thinking ill of me just fills me with paranoia. Makes no sense that I worry more about strangers opinions than people I know but there you go, thats how I feel.
I’m making a very real, concerted effort to change that now though. I have vowed to be as honest as is possible on the net, and allow the real me to come across and I think that rather than my blog or any of the message boards I frequent, it’s very much down to twitter. The immediacy of it almost demands a lack of self-censorship.
Good luck with this project, I’ll be interested to see the results.
I had to read this post several times to really grasp what you were saying. In so doing I found myself voting choice 1-completely different. I see who I am online as being the real me, whether I’m on twitter, a flight of the conchords message board, writing email… the online me is the real genuine me. I don’t think of the “real world” me as even being me. I don’t know who or what that person is. I’m like white noise in real life. My hair hangs over my eyes, my hands are clasped tightly to my ribs, and I can go weeks without hearing my own voice even once. But, the me that you speak to is inside there. She’s thinking, dreaming and having conversations with people inside her mind (even though they don’t know it.). That person is trapped. She doesn’t know how to get out. It’s not even shyness. When I’m around other people it’s like thinking in a thick swamp. My thoughts are sludgy and slow. Climbing mount everest seems far easier than carrying on a conversation. I smile and nod a lot. I end up saying yes to opinions I don’t agree with, but I can’t think straight enough to even realize that in the moment. I’m completely mired in this swamp. My brain betrays me and my words are just gone. A blind panic fills my body as I try to answer a simple question. I scramble to find words, but they’re just gone! But, then I come online and it’s dry, flat lands and I can think and run fast in my mental landscape. I can follow the conversations being had. People become something that I can understand and not a rubix cube that I’m constantly turning to try to get all the pieces to line up. I don’t have to guess if someone is happy,sad or angry at me. 🙂 <-That makes it all clear. I'm calm and suddenly I can think, that foggy barrier that's always there in the real world falls away and I'm no longer stuck inside my head.
As far as creativity goes. I have branched out into doing new things because of twitter. For instance, Senryu I learned about solely from twitter. So I voted more creative but really it's something between the two. Sometimes, time I could be creating something but I spend that time chatting instead. hehe
What a GREAT project! I am wickedly intrigued by the captivation of online communication/community as it relates to our interactions, our creative outlets and the relationships we build. Twitter offers a diverse menu of appeal – short, compact blasts of information and instant gratification being pretty high up on the ladder. It will be interesting to see what else you discover!
Please keep us informed.
Best of luck!
AC
I answered 4, but that’s in part because of the inadequate definition of “day to day world.” I don’t show the same face in all aspects of that world, so what’s one more presented facet online?
The big example is, of course, that certain segments of my daily life do not know about my writing identity or that I write (my employer, my in-laws, etc.). They get a sanitized version of “me” that’s actually less true to who I am that what I reveal on twitter or other online forums. That said, the self-censorship spills over into online in order to keep those versions sanitized. I studiously avoid tweeting details that could identify me to the casual reader or observer (I’ve long ago realized that a hacker or dedicated online stalker could probably find me, but that’s just not worth the worry).
So… the problem is, which is the ‘true’ me? I can’t really tell you how online compares to off without that definition.
I didn’t ask about the ‘true you’. In fact, I specified that that was NOT what I was asking. hehe
Such complex questions – not sure about my previous answer anymore, giving it more thought, Twitter, in my experience, creates a special barrier, one that you can see through, but still covers up the things you don’t want everyone to see. You can still share and thus feel free to experiment, say things you might not otherwise, and still feel protected. My ‘real-life’ personality isn’t much different from what you see online. I write and comment as I would in person – but there is alway something held back, usually out of politeness, social necessity. If there is one major difference between online me and real me, real me is less likely to ramble. She keeps quiet most of the time and good for her. Troublemaker, otherwise.
Your second quiz is what gets me – I cannot say that Twitter inspires more creativity from me or not, because it does both and neither at the same time. There are times when Twitter is simply a time-suck and takes more than it gives (not that this is Twitter’s fault). The distraction of Twitter is legendary and my fixation with it has ruined several writing projects, delayed them or run them off the rails.
I like to think that, online at least, the very best bits of me are available to whomever wants them, and if they choose, they will only ever interact with the best parts of me. I think most people choose this way – they don’t want to go any deeper than the surface. Too many unknowns. Too much risk.
I’ve had friendships that started (and ended) online, one or two that lasted for years and we never really knew one another beyond the ‘best’ we were willing to share. When I tried to go a little deeper, develop intimacy, for example, I mostly found rejection. No, that’s not quite right, found complete rejection. Others experience different things. We develop new ways to be creative, to gather information or distill it, but in so doing, we build new filters around it.
As a writer, I’ve noticed more competitiveness, even a drive by some writers to be so experimental or otherwise ‘creative’ that they simply go off the map. Not that this is a bad thing, but there’s that line between what we do for ourselves and what we do for attention. I suppose, in the end, it’s like anything else, any other opportunity to grow, there is always that natural instinct to protect one’s self, defend your territory. The ones most successful at it (and this has a broad meaning as well, but I mean those most open to possibility), share what they learn without restraint and work to build their communities. They do it not merely for themselves, but as means to true connection, something we all want, I think.
Online me just rambled, apologies. Good luck with this and keep us updated.
Wow! Thank you! My consideration of this was cathartic.
I started out intending to be a completely different person on Twitter than in real life. One with no past, no real life connections, a totally artificial construct. My reasoning was simple: I didn’t want to deal with the day to day of my life in an online forum. I wanted it to be an escape, somewhere that I could be the person who doesn’t get addressed in regular daily life. It failed. Oh how it failed! I’d forgotten one really important thing: other people. I couldn’t simply not respond or care about the people I started to connect with online. If someone tweeted that they were having a shitty day, I had to respond to that. That’s part of my base nature, and not likely to be changed. That being said, while not able to be a totally different person, there are facets that are more nurtured and available when I am online than in real life.
However, my creativity has exploded in conjunction with Twitter. It was support from the people I’ve connected with that lead me to my own blog and my own writing. I know that I would not have done either had I not had that kind of support. The amount of riffing, of playing off each other, of sharing and challenging is an incubator as surely as any post-secondary institution. Case in point: someone shared a tumblr photo months ago, which prompted many tweets between several people. The photo inspired a short story, which will be published in the near future. Would that story have come about without that interaction? I doubt it. The Hearteater Anthology is a brilliant example of this sort of spontaneous, explosive creativity.
RG you know my story so I will let you be the judge. You keep flabbergasting me by how you have combined avocation and an avocation into something beautifully creative.
As you know, Rgrl, these have become crucial matters to me, in the truest sense of the word–crux, crossroads–over the last couple of years. I’m still wrestling. I really look forward to the ongoing conversation about your questions, your research, and your analysis. I’ll work on articulating my own take, elements of which have been swirling unsettled in my head for a long time. Thanks for giving us a springboard.
Ah RG, you’re touching on a topic that is fascinating me too _and_ also making me reconsider a Phd, obviously in a different field to yours, but, I think the resulting work could be complimentary.
For me, personally, how and who I am on the Twitter account you know me on (I have three!) is not all of who I am, let me explain… I started the account as purely a link to a sex blog with a lover, purely for sexual purposes and it has morphed considerably since the time since he and I ended, nearly a year ago now, into be a more full and complete expression of who I am, but, it is missing the very portions of me that cannot be shared so as to avoid identifying myself locally.
It is because of cultural restraints that some of my sexual proclivities remain expressed to few in my physical life and why more people see that particular aspect of me on Twitter than they do in real life, but, that is also linked to my work. It is simply not appropriate for people in my physical world to know some of what ‘The Twitter’ knows about me & I live in a very small community, I’d never work again! So Twitter misses out on hearing about the parts of me connected to my work and daily life and environment, which is a very large part of who I am and I _do_ think that’s a loss to those I interact with, but, for my own protection I must limit that expression of myself.
With those who know me well I’m pretty much the same in the physical world as I am on Twitter, but, in the physical world that is a very small number of people; again, cultural restraints prevail. I think I need to relocate!
Ah… creativity – delicious! My experience of Twitter has increased, in my perception, my levels of comfort in terms of being creative with the written word; and I’ve been told I’ve become a better writer. I’ve only been writing creatively for a year, the same amount of time I’ve been using Twitter and I went from using it almost as a sex toy to now a vehicle for so many other expressions; one of them primarily being my erotic writing. Interestingly though, my ‘other; writing lives elsewhere, on another Twitter account and on another website.
I’m fascinated by the schisms people create within themselves in terms of how they present themselves to the world, how different aspects of who they are come to life with certain people and not with others; but, more crucially, I’m interested in the thought processes and emotional responses that _lead_ to those decisions. I want to understand why most humans feel the need to restrain ourselves in terms of who we are, to not unleash and unfurl our full glory and potential as human beings; we control ourselves, diminish, restrict and deflate ourselves _so_ much, and for what, no one is thanking us for it, no one notices we do it, we only feel the cost, the price of it within ourselves; to me, it’s a very high price to pay for anything, loss of congruency with self.
I’m also interested in how mental health plays a role in peoples’ use of Twitter and other social media too, it’s my experience that those with personality disorders, depression and relationship based phobias utilise the internet in vastly different ways to the rest of the world. My previous area of study has been in sex offenders, female paedophiles specifically, and their use of the internet, I think smut writers and Twitter would be a _lot_ more fun…
I hope I’ve not rambled too much and that some of this is useful or interesting to you in some way; and that you keep ‘us’ posted on your Phd plans 🙂
x
i’m almost the same fluffy-brained optimist on Twitter that i am IRL. but since i started speaking to people (specifically writers, artists, and creators in general) on Twitter, i’ve found the writer in myself – the creative outlet i was always looking for but had no clue where to look. the encouragement of and inspiration from my newfound Twitterfriends has been utterly invaluable in giving me the confidence to pursue it. it’s also revealed interests that were hidden from me, for various reasons, and i feel like my brain is beginning to breathe a little easier.
and you’re a big part of that, RG, so thank you.
XXX
An interesting topic, RG. I do have a Twitter account, but it was originally set up primarily for business reasons. Although as it developed, more of my existing friends followed me, so it ended up more like an extension of my Facebook account. I have never used it creatively. In fact, I find it hard to envision how that might work, within the space constraints!
So, my comments largely refer to my use of Facebook rather than Twitter, because I have more experience there. IRL, I am a pretty direct and upfront person, and I certainly don’t bow to social conventions – if someone asks who I am, I answer honestly, rather than the formulaic “I’m fine”, for example. Equally, friends are generally aware of my sexual proclivities, even if some of them might cringe at the level of detail! 🙂 A lot of this is because I am congenitally unable to lie (without major advance warning, to practise!)
On Facebook, I am the same person as I am IRL, and all my friends on there are real life friends. I don’t do that “collecting” thing that so many people seem to do. So yes, it’s frank and open and smutty. More fun that way. 😉