Life's Little Mysteries
Created | Updated Mar 13, 2012
I've always tried not to judge things I have no idea about because I've either never heard of them before, or not experienced them. This way, I once ended up with a nasty rash after I had gone to a solarium. Now I could never see the point of going to one, and I wasn't convinced it was safe, but all my friends went regularly, and I thought if I wanted to have some argument against them, or have to admit that my friends were right, I had to find out for myself.
Turned out I had an allergic reaction to the detergent they used to clean the things. It suited me well, I had the proof (my arms looked horrible!) that solaria were not for me. Apart from not seeing the point in the first place, it was not an experience to my taste. I didn't close the lid of the sun-bed. I felt like lying in a coffin (it looked like one, too), and although I'm not claustrophobic, I had images of me being locked into this thing, burning to ashes. I thought it was interesting that you had to wear protective glasses. That didn't do anything to improve my trust in the whole affair. In fact, I covered my face with a towel! Not exactly what you aim for when going to a solarium for a nice tan in the face.
But I digress. It's not really mysterious when people want to 'look healthy'. There are other things that puzzle me, like what are known as 'social networking sites'. The first one I was aware of a few years ago, was MySpace. Ever one to try out new things, I signed up. Not for long, though. I thoroughly disliked the banner ads, the constant bombardment with photos of scantily clad girls (if they wore any clothes at all), and the fact that 'whatshisname' was added as my friend although I had no idea who he was. I cancelled that account a few days later, and I never looked back.
When I got an invite for facebook, I didn't react at first. I waited for nearly a year before I joined, and only after several friends had assured me that it was different from myspace and after I had followed the various discussion threads here on h2g2. Fortunately, it is a nice enough site. I can play Scrabble there, do jigsaw puzzles, exchange the odd message with friends and I can even have a rant there if I feel like it. True, I am still bombarded with ads, but I can take influence on which sort of ads I get to see, which is something.
Then suddenly, about a year or so ago, a new social networking site made the headlines: Twitter. I saw a report on TV, where people went through one of Germany's cities, calling out things like: 'I've just had a drink. It was lukewarm', or 'Must call my girlfriend' and similar things. Passers-by didn't understand this, and they didn't find it funny, either. So once again, I waited, reading up on it, following my friends' discussions about it.
I was mystified by the concept of it: why would I want to know any movement of some 'celebrity' or politician? In the end, I created an account to find out for myself. Well...
As I see it, it's completely devoid of sense. It's not about following somebody, but about being followed. And if you want to be followed, you have to tweet non-stop. Chances are, that you'll amass a huge amount of 'followers'. However, you can even get followers if you don't have anything to say (and that doesn't necessarily mean that those who tweet a lot have something to say). It's not what Twitter is about, I've been told. That's why it is limited to 140 characters. Nobody expects you to say anything coherent in so few characters. Apart from a handful of trusted hootoo friends, I found I suddenly had a follower. I had no idea who she was: some lady from a big company in the USA. I expressed my puzzlement in a tweet, which apparently scared her off because she 'unfollowed' me again. Just as well. Why would anybody follow Lieschen Müller (ie Jane Doe, ie me) anyway?
I let it rest. I even nearly forgot about it until... until I had yet another Twitter account to take care of, that of the h2g2 Post. Whenever I can make the time (and remember it in the first place), I 'tweet' the articles of the latest issue. I don't know why I'm doing it. I don't think anybody reads them. Twitter isn't there to be read, apparently. It's moving much too fast for that anyway. For a while, millions (or thousands, I don't recall) followed somebody calling themselves 'Big Ben'. They tweeted bongs each full hour (GMT), the amount of bongs according to what time it was in London. I couldn't see the point of it. I found it remotely funny, but I think Twitter is not for me. So why do I do it? Because each time after I've 'tweeted' the h2g2 Post Team account on Twitter gets a lot of new followers. Somebody somewhere must read it after all. Who they are, and what their motivation is to follow the Post team I have no idea, but if it helps to attract new readers to h2g2 in general in the h2g2 Post in specific, it's fine. I won't complain. But as if all that wasn't mystifying enough, my own Twitter account has new followers, too. Now I don't mind, I could set my account to private if I wanted. But all I do is to occasionally 'retweet' the Post account tweets a few hours later, after they've gone into oblivion on the accounts of the Post's followers (some of which follow more than 1,000 people). Just imagine: to read every tweet of more than 1,000 people you'd need to be glued to your pc or mobile phone or whatever device you have to go online with for 24/24. I don't get it. Maybe I'm just too old?1
