Ghana Twitter as used here, refers to conversations on Twitter that are mainly engaged in by Ghanaians and are based on very local issues. Thus, if you are not a Ghanaian on Twitter and you do not engage trends and in such spaces, you are not the target of this piece.
There used to be a belief in some quarters that Twitter was for a certain class of people. They said Twitter is not for idle chatter and was for more serious conversations unlike Facebook. Some even migrated from Facebook in search of deeper conversations and sometimes global limelight. Some of such migrants volunteered as gatekeepers telling people what they should do on Facebook and not on Twitter. However, over time, I am coming to the understanding that, Ghana Twitter may actually be a most unsavoury space. I write this as somebody who follows conversations on Ghanaian Twitter, knows the trending hashtags but would rather keep my comments to myself.
While risking the charge of overgeneralization, I write about my disappointment with the nature of conversations that tend to go on within the Ghana Twitter sphere. Ironically, while many within this space want a voice, they are the first to attack anybody expressing an opinion they disagree with. Total and consistent agreement is for zombies, not human beings. There is no value in it. But while disagreement is encouraged, it is rather bizarre that insults and defamation are increasingly becoming the go-to tools. Is this trend surprising? Yes and no.
The trend is surprising because in everyday offline Ghanaian discourses, I cannot say that brazen attacks and disrespect characterize our disagreements. In our offline conversations, we seem to have a larger room to accommodate dissenting views. This is more so the case when the person we are dealing with is an adult or well-respected public figure. It would not matter whether the person shares an ethnic, religious or political culture with you. We generally tend to be decorous and end our arguments with ‘let us agree to disagree’.
However, on Ghana Twitter, the opposite seems to be gaining roots. However, this is why I am not surprised. The Twitter architecture is different from Facebook in many ways. One, your experience is shaped by the concept of followership. People must choose to follow you else whatever you tweet may generally be for yourself. People who are already public figures in offline spaces naturally get more followers on Twitter. Whatever they tweet is seen by many. This leads to the problem.
Almost everybody on Twitter wants to increase followership. Self-importance is a human trait and there is nothing wrong with that. Self-importance is linked to our calculation of our relevance to others. On Twitter, the said calculus is mainly about who follows you, how many follow, who retweets, how many retweet, who likes our tweetsposts, how many like it, who replies to our tweetsposts and how many replies there are.
On Ghana Twitter, it looks like people are so bent on getting followers that they would ‘cut their fingers’ for it. People are reaching to the depths of their souls and their brains to say something intelligent, funny or savage. You can pat yourself on the back if your wit or your erudition wins you some followers. However, there are others who see funny in their crass tweets. In 280 characters, they would insult people who have done them no wrong. In 280 characters, they would say the meanest and most degrading things to others. In 280 characters, they would slander people they have not met before. This is all in the name of ‘I am savage’ or ‘Twitter is not a real place’.
All that these others had to do was to express an opinion and not in any condescending manner.
On Facebook, people tend to actually know people. You send me a friend request because I know you or you like my posts or we have mutual friends. I accept to be your friend because I know you or we share actual real-life friends. Consequently, Facebook often provides a strong avenue for building friendships. As the friendship on Facebook is mutual, there is really no competition to build the biggest friends list. Afterall, Facebook caps friends at 5000. If you think about it, these platform tweaks on Facebook and Twitter are really decisions that affect how each society uses this platform.
At least on Facebook, you may not want your parents, spouse’s parents (who may all be your friends on Facebook) to revise what they think of you because of the unprintable words you print. If there should be a revision, then it should be upward. Conversely, on Twitter, relationship is really not at the core of the interactions. Thus it is easier for people to openly denigrate others. After all, you are likely to not know the person or anybody related to him in real life.
Sometimes it really feels like an unspoken melee for the spotlight.
