Talking to Twitter

When I first heard about twitter I thought, what’s the point, you don’t have room to say anything valuable. Then my brother suggested it as a way of advertising my blog and now I’ve had a go with it I love it. I’ve only been on it three days, but I keep wanting to make entries, I’m trying to limit myself to four a day. It’s great. Especially all the famous people on it, you can know what they’re thinking throughout the day even though you’ve never spoken to them. I have three people following me, my brother and two people I don’t know. I love letting people know what I‘ve just done or what’s on my mind. It’s like a global address book. Because you don’t actually have a conversation with anyone, it’s great for autistic people.

I remember I used to get very excited about meeting new people. I was very innocent. Most people when they meet someone new, greet them with suspicion and distrust at the back of their minds. Unless that person looks and sounds like us, we think what do they want from me and how can I protect myself. I was the opposite, like a puppy all excited, I asked myself what this new person would be like, if we would become friends, what new things would they teach me, If I hadn’t been autistic and was able to form better relationships I think I would have been very sociable. After a long time though, several house moves, job changes and two stints at university, I realised I was never going to find the ’friends’ I wanted because I just couldn’t give people what they wanted. Now I’ve been diagnosed I know why that is.

With Twitter I feel free again. I can talk to all these new people I haven’t met and there won’t be any of the stress that normally goes a long with meeting people. No trying to figure out what a person really thinks, no decoding of ambiguous replies, no worrying about if they like you. I prefer it to Facebook. Facebook is an extension of social networks in the real the real world so you still get the same games being played out. You have to accept people as friends before you can interact with them., and there are lots of privacy issues you don’t have with Twitter. As there is no comment facility on Twitter nobody can be rude about anything you write. You can choose to block people from receiving you tweets if you want, but it’s not really necessary unless you have a strong personal dislike of them or they’re stalking you.