The Rape of Twitter.

Back in 5,000 BC the inventor of soft clay tablets for pressing hieroglyphics in with a stick was not lambasted for providing a medium by which the pharaoh could be threatened with rape. Likewise the inventor of papyrus and ink. Johannes Gutenberg was not criticised for mechanising the process of printing. The purveyors of picture postcards were not censured for what people chose to write on them, nor the Royal Mail for sending them or the postman for delivering them. There has long been a recognition that the delivery means is quite separate to what is delivered, and since the inception of language there’s always been forms of redress if you don’t like what’s been said. Twitter and other social media delivery systems are now though increasingly seen as responsible for controlling the content of what they deliver. It seems the increasing speed and breadth of distribution of the ephemeral world of language and anonymity is leaving only the messenger accountable. I’m left wondering if after thousands of years of creating and using language we are getting bored with it and turning our attention to the means by which it is transmitted. Is the medium finally becoming the message? Are we becoming increasingly transfixed by social media whilst at the same time impervious to its falling consequentiality? I have an image of a vastly reduced persona incessantly reading the same phrase, “How are you?” over and over again. Are we welcoming in dementia as a form of social interconnectedness? If you need proof read letters pre 1950. They’re not ‘quaint’ they’re thoughtfully created meaningful language. Maybe Twitter should not be condemned for delivering rape messages but for provoking us to rape our own language.