I have been on Twitter for quite a while now, but I still have less than ten followers and now I only read the tweets of the people I follow.
There was a time when I tried hard to tweet something interesting that would attract people’s interest, but the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t come up with words. Even if I could come up with something clever, if someone else tweeted the same thing, I would stop because I thought it would be boring.
Still, there were days when I would tweet in rapid succession, as if I were suddenly possessed by a demon. As if I was obsessed with something, I would get excited and tweet 10 or 20 tweets in a row.
Usually it was just a drunken flirtation, and the next day, when I got back into the swing of things, I found the content to be almost completely self-loathing, and I usually deleted most of them.
So, I usually keep a reading account on Twitter, but the other day, I happened to find an episode when I was in the mood to write about it.
It was an incident in which a person I was following because I liked his tweets suddenly tweeted a suicide threat, and he actually attempted suicide on the same day.
The next day, I was quite shocked when I read the tweet that he was saved from a hospital room.
The person said that he was saved thanks to an acquaintance (who is a very close friend) who read the tweet and immediately contacted the police. What shocked me was that I had dismissed the suicide threat as “just a joke.
Social networking sites, not limited to Twitter, are not only a place for personal expression, but also a public space. There are, of course, lofty tweets and vulgar tweets. Some are just snide remarks, others are soliloquies.
It is not a public forum theory in the world of law, but it is a place where miscellaneous opinions can be freely expressed, which is why it is valuable and interesting, but there is still something unreliable about what is said on social networking sites. It is undeniable that people, including bloggers, tend to read things half-truthfully. And then I click the “like” button just based on a feeling.
However, I have read quite a lot of tweets from people who have made suicide threats over the years, and even though I thought I had a rough idea of their personalities and what they were thinking, I could not discern whether they were telling the truth or joking.
I was not sure if this is something that is common to all people and can’t be helped in a sense, or if my senses have become numb from being so immersed in social networking information.
Suddenly I came back to myself and wondered if, by any chance, I had become desensitized, not only to the words on social networking sites like this one, but also to the news on TV, the answers in the Diet, and even to the words exchanged between friends, and if, by some chance, I had become desensitized to the words of the people in the world. I feared that I had somehow become insensitive.
I feared that I might not be able to properly receive the words of the most important people in my life.
Of course, what people say and do on social networking sites is different from what people do in real life. However, just as there are people who die because they can no longer stand the slander of social networking sites, we live in a world where a word said in jest can take a person’s life.
The flood of social networking sites may have the effect of paralyzing people’s ability to distinguish between words said in the true sense of the word and words said in a light joking manner.
If you only follow the text, it is difficult to tell whether something is sincere or a joke. Some people, however, take jokes seriously. It will be important to learn to discern how much of what we say and what we see is true and how much is a lie.
What I liked about Twitter this time was that people who had personally met the person who attempted suicide, including people who knew the person and well-known intellectuals, immediately responded to tweets saying that the person had survived, and retweeted them in a very gentle and excellent manner.
Some of them were so kind that I was moved to tears when I read them, even though I was not the one who tweeted them. I think this is one of the great things about social networking sites.
I think this is a good thing about social networking sites. The criterion for distinguishing between words that are honest and those that are light-hearted is, in the end, whether or not one’s own “feelings” are moved.
Even if the words seem true at first glance, if they do not move you emotionally, you should not believe them. First of all, be sensitive to your own “emotion. This may be the best defense against missing out on the words of your loved ones.
See you soon.
