Somewhat grandly they’re calling it “guerilla tweeting”. It was yet another inevitable corollary of the immediacy of social media. We had observed the clumsy manner with which the political parties adopted “the internet” and had witnessed how hard they tried to retain the one-way traffic approach: We Preach, You Listen. What was that hopeless PN site again? With all the wiggly ribbons and plastic aloofness? Labour just loved youtube and gave us those lovely little clips of stereotypical niche market voters telling us why they will vote for Joseph (Ghax nemmen fih ) without really informing us of all the iced buns that all participants would get once the party was in government.
Twitter was not so strong back then and has only surfaced since the general hemorrhage from Facebook began. Politician’s Facebook pages where an easy target – who can ever forget Luciano “Likey” Busuttil with his unending pleas for “Aghfas Like”? Nobody really got to grips as to how Facebook really worked and what was the demarcation line between public and private – also Mark Zuckerberg became a right royal pain in the arse trying to determine what we want to see and what we could not see. Facebook walls dried up and twitter burgeoned.
It’s great, twitter is, because it obliges you to be brief. For the politician trained to think in binary packets it was a godsend. Suddenly everyone from the PM to the pope was tweeting away happily. Publicly. The addiction was worse than Facebook. Which is where the “guerilla” boys and gals came in. They discovered that with their own twitter account they could have a direct line to the politician in question and actually contradict him or uncover their untruths. A nightmare for the politician used to one-way traffic really.
Saviour “Hogan” Balzan and Ariadne Massa are two journalists who come to mind and who have taken to disliking the quasi-anonymous “bullies” on twitter. Balzan and Massa from part of that fourth estate that is generally as lacking as political parties in its approach to two-way communication. You only have to look at the evolution of their respective papers’ websites to see the desperate attempt at controlling information and how it is dissipated. The editorial choices as to what is and is not relevant news can be as surprising as the sun making an appearance in Luxembourg in November. Never mind the bollocks though, now there are the “guerilla twitters” to set things right.
They are there yapping and twitting away incessantly until, tired of the aggro, the target decides to block them out of his or her vision. Which only means that a new account will be created with an even more aggressive and persistent stance. Balzan scraped the bottom of the barrel by calling for the blocking and reporting of what he called “fake twitter accounts”. As usual he hasn’t the faintest. There is no such thing as a “fake twitter account”. Or rather, the only time an account is fake is when it claims to be someone’s account when it is not really his. For example if I were to open an account called @PaulPogba I would be faking to be the world’s greatest midfielder when I am very evidently not.
@baxxterswar is not a fake twitter account. Baxxter is very irritatingly real. Irritatingly for many people it seems. Neither are all the myriad accounts popping up every day in order to harass ministers and kow-towing journalists alike. All we need now is for that has-been JPO and side-kick Deborah Schembri to include this kind of “guerilla warfare” in their Cyber Bullying Campaign. You know, all this while our beloved government is striking deals with China and its Great Internet Wall.
Twitter is a cutting edge weapon for the alert citizen. Politicians can either reply or block. The other day Minister Cardona tweeted the fabulous increase in retail sales recorded in Malta. I tweeted back “Does it include the sales from Leisure Clothing?”. “Tajba” he replied dryly while “favoriting” my tweet. I guess I am a few yellow cards away from being blocked.
Use the weapon at your own peril. Anonymity is no excuse for bad taste and offensive behaviour. Otherwise tweet and be damned. Active citizens are much much better than the passive bull we have gotten used to. I only would like to think that had this twitter wave existed a while back there would have been twitter guerilla tactics with just as much enthusiastic participation. It is so much better than “tistghu tghiduli x’qed jigri hawnhekk?”
L’amour est comme l’oiseau de twitter , on est bleu de lui seulement pour 48h.
D’abord on s’affilie ensuite on se follow.
On en deviens fêler et on fini solo.Prend garde à toi.
Et à tous ceux qui vous like.
Et les sourires qui remplacent souvent des coup d’hashtag.
Prend garde à toi.
Haa les amis , les potes ou les followers.
Vous faites erreur , vous avez juste la cote.[…]
L’amour est enfant de la consommation.
Il voudras toujours toujours toujours plus de choix.
Mais que vous voulez-vous.
De sentiments tombé du camion.
L’offre et la demande pour unique et seul loi.
Prend garde à toi.
Les gens connaissent déjà les dangers.
Moi j’ai gardé mon ticket et si il faut je vais l’échanger moi.
Prend garde à toi.
Il si il le faut j’irai me venger moi.
Cette oiseau de malheur je le met en cage , je le fais chanter moi.
