2009. That oh so awesome year when I graduated and hopped onto twitter as my escape out of the recession-hit placement dates.
Since then it has become my safe haven for everything good, bad and ugly. Before I knew it, me and my odd hundred followers were happily tweeting rants, tears of joy and loneliness when yahoo chat sounded a little too passe.
With time tweets changed, corporate life happened, six long IPL seasons of supporting KKR through thick and thin. And somewhere in between social media became a lot more than just a space to express and connect.
Today when sitting behind a laptop I run a community, earn money and recognition in due process, this world sounds more important than the offline one. My decisions, strategies, future dreams all start and stop with this.
For years I refrained from tweeting my views on religion, politics and feminism. Reason being that these ideas are too strong, controversial and often not important enough to be explained through social media.
But off late spurts (okay long days) of reactions over these subjects can be seen on my timeline. I am giving in to the temptation to take to online while expressing my views. I reacted first. Then I started reading in between lines. Then saw trends. Observed people online, read their blogs. Saw how they toe lines everywhere. Speak in sly tweets and facebook updates.
Appalled could be a small word here.
But again why tweet now what I have done never?
Because social media matters to me enough for me to be myself. If my silence is hurting an idea I own so passionately close to my heart then I shall be vocal. If I am ready to earn money online why shouldn’t I be ready to express my political or religious views there?
Of course if I wasn’t a vocal person on these subjects in general, then it made sense. But I am not. I am the first one to snap in a family discussion if even as much as a mention is made to these ideas. So this cannot be any different. Else personally speaking my ethics ask me to give up social media now.
And to those who feel that social media and its impact doesn’t matter to anyone. Have a look below. Five out of ten trends are currently paid trends. If it didn’t matter, why would there be people spending money?
Also, being a social media active person I make many decisions based on online presence of a brand. From e-commerce to even otherwise. If a political party doesn’t get their act together for me, my vote shall be affected.
Last bit – To whomsoever it may concern.
What do you believe? Is social media an important part of your life?
Connecting to #MondayMusings
I have been active on Twitter lately and yeah, even I refrain myself from expressing my views on politics, feminism and religion. Trying to stay away from controversies online probably. I am still uncomfortable discussing politics out there. Social media is important and so is expressing our views. Maybe I will get inspired by you and start expressing my views ????
I am a regular reader of your tweets. Social media is powerful and it matters. Hence there are paid tweets, followers are bought with money and agencies are hired to manage social media accounts. All of us stand for certain issues, some are non controversial while some others are controversial. When you allow yourself to be vocal about your stand on the controversial ones, you open yourself to both positivity (which you intend to bring) as well as negativity (which you will surely get in the process since you are going against the popular tide). Okay with both the aspects, then go ahead. I cannot deny from social media playing an important part of my life inspite of not expressing myself on it other than sharing my blogs. Here I get to read varied perspectives which the newspapers do not even try to venture into.
My logic is simple. If writing something makes me angry, glued to every response, anxious and in general harms my peace of mind, l stay away from it. But to each their own. As a person who logs into Twitter a few times a day, some TLs can become annoying and repetitive. That is not to say that l haven’t expressed my views on the said subjects. But l’d rather only discuss these offline with friends who share a relationship with me.
I like social media for what it brings to me – information. I use social media like a blogger would – sometimes promotional for my blog and sometimes for opinions. I am not very vocal but I am okay with a little subdued approach.
If I get to the point where I use the platform to share all of my opinions – I would be okay with both positivity and the hate message. All part of the game. Isn’t it?
I joined Twitter in 2010 and the account remained dormant till 2012 and 2013, I started to understand its complexity and layers. I left University in August 2008 and completed grads in 2006. It was the best of times in my life. As citizens, we must be politically and socially aware, to make our voices heard.