I found the following tweet on my timeline this morning:
@euonymblog can you twitt a bit less on ordinary things ? – we’re following you bc of the eu-part, txs
I have to admit, I was (and remain) quite annoyed about it, and I’ve been trying to work out why. I think it comes down to a point I make quite often when talking about social media and made when writing about this for the Waltzing Matilda blog:
One should think of social media as a reception rather than a meeting. It’s worth going to, you make some good contacts, you often get a lot done, but sometimes you talk about tennis or where you are going for your holidays.
And so for me, someone saying what I saw this morning was like talking to a group of people at a reception and one of them saying “Actually, I’m not interested in what you’re saying, could you please say something more related to my particular interests”. In the reception scenario, if you weren’t interested, wouldn’t you just drift away and talk to someone else?
I have a lot of EU-related followers, and that of course is a major element. But I also interact with UK political commentators, a lot of science writers, people from local government, knitting bloggers and many other random, weird and totally wonderful people. This is my personal tweeting account, and my personal blog and I am someone who has interests wider than my work. If you’re only interested in my work, you can go elsewhere (including our office’s official Twitter account @eulondonrep).
So I was annoyed, and I feel I have a right to be so. Just because we’re in a digital medium, we don’t have to forget our manners.