Status Anxiety

21 February 2009

One of the paradoxes of social organisations is that the more egalitarian they are on the surface, the more hierarchical they are underneath.

The interest shown by the hoi polloi (the lumpen twittertariat) in celebrities is not reciprocated. If you click on a person’s Twitter profile you can see the number of people following them and the number they’re following. As a general rule, the greater the discrepancy between these two figures, the higher the individual’s status. For instance, Jonathan Ross has over 100,000 followers, but is only following 256 people. By Twitter standards, that is unusually democratic. William Shatner, for instance, has 15,437 followers and is following precisely four people, one of whom is the director of the new Star Trek movie. Alan Carr has almost 5,000 followers and is following one person: a Radio 1 DJ. It is almost as if Twitter was invented to illustrate H.L. Mencken’s definition of a star: ‘A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.’ The exception to this rule is Stephen Fry, who takes Twitter’s egalitarian ethic more seriously. To begin with, he made a point of conscientiously following everyone who was good enough to follow him, but he appears to have drawn the line at 50,000. He now has over 200,000 followers.

The number of fans you have is not the only status indicator on Twitter. Another telltale sign is how you describe yourself in your ‘Bio’. As a general rule, the more surrealist and off-point you are, the better. For instance, Will Self’s reads ‘I want to be misunderstood’, while Peter Serafinowicz calls himself a ‘non-sexual prostitute’. The idea is to give the impression that the last reason you’re on Twitter is to promote yourself. Contrast this with Britney Spears: ‘Yes! This is the real Britney Spears! We’ve got updates from her team, her website and yes, even Britney herself!’ Other status indicators include the length of time you’ve been twittering (the longer, the better); the frequency with which you tweet (the more, the merrier); and how good you are at summing up a thought in 140 characters or less. Dividing a thought between two tweets, for instance, is an absolute no-no.

No doubt Twitter will drop the pretence of being socially democratic before long, and at that point it may become a genuinely levelling force. The flipside of the egalitarian paradox is that organisations that celebrate elitism tend to be much less hierarchical. I look forward to the day when @Wossy is followed by as few people as he is following.

Previous page 1 | 2

More articles from: Toby Young | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (3)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Anxiously stable

February 19th, 2009 11:26am Report this comment

Twitter ye not – too many people seem to have too much time on their hands. Especially that Woss fellow.

Tina Louise

February 19th, 2009 7:12pm Report this comment

Although well written, your view is not what I see at Twitter. I discovered it recently and am finding it fascinating.

Celebrity is not a reason to be on there, but following a few can be interesting.

I have chosen to follow people who do not live lives like mine and who do not focus on the subjects I do - this way I observe reactions from different perspectives.

As this is another new thing... I choose to 'Tweet' because I have no idea where it is heading and that's interesting.

Twitter is people, interacting with people, in a way that connects those who would otherwise not connect in any other way.

Terijo

February 20th, 2009 4:32pm Report this comment

I am interested in this notion. I do believe it is true. Do you have places I can go to read more on the phenomenom? To me it seems like we do all manner of things to change ourselves in ways which change nothing at all.

Post comment