“SPIT IT OUT”
By: THEmeanMRmustard
In the same way that scientists can’t accurately measure the hyper-lightning movements of quantum particles, it is impossible for marketers to put a fixed value on the tweets that make up the millions of rushing, constantly changing Twitter streams. The movements of Tweets don’t follow a strict set of rules—and yet, like the particles, they aren’t completely chaotic either. Their worth can be understood according to context and probability—visible not as points or bars on a graph but as waves of undetermined length reaching out in multiple directions. When the send button is pressed, a tweet appears in many places at once (i.e. on individual feeds via various devices) and contains the possibility of being retweeted in many others. A tweet can simultaneously create new connections and dissemble old ones—it can both inspire and disgust, cause followers to be gained or lost. Instead of prescribing rules for how to tweet, it makes more sense to communicate the impossibility of prescribing rules, and instead encourage users to open up to the free flow of the streams—as opposed to clamping down extra-hard with filters and search tools.
The marketers and business people and so-called social media experts will point to this and that as the right and wrong way to Tweet—not realizing that the more exacting they try to be the more the TRUE essence of Twitter slips through their fingers—similar to another aspect of quantum physics called The Observer Effect—which refers to changes that the act of observation will make on the phenomenon being observed.
As long as Twitter continues to be conceptualized as an online version of the existing physical world, many users will miss out on its power as a tool for revealing the invisible interdependent connections between us all. (Remember: just because something is invisible or doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it isn’t real.) The particle-dance movements of tweets provide flashes of fractal multi-verses bursting forth like fireworks before fading just as fast. The goal should not be to freeze-frame and dissect it—but to enjoy its fleeting nature for what it is in a shared awareness of the beauty of NOW.
