Twitter is a strange beast. Many of us who use twitter often believe that the twitterverse is all important. However the twitterverse and reality and two very different beasts.
This evening it emerged that someone on twitter has defected from the Tories to UKIP. However it wasn’t an MP or an MEP or a councillor. It was an activist. Always interesting and personally I hope she has found her rightful home and enjoys life as a member of UKIP. I have no opinion on people moving from one party to another but is it really that big of a deal?
That is what I am sitting here shaking my head at. A few weeks ago there were a whole raft of Lib Dem activists who left the party over the NHS Bill. A lot of these people haven’t moved to another party but one or two have joined the Greens. I know that a fair few Lib Dems have now gone to Labour. These things though are debated mercilessly and I just wonder why.
Is a Tory activist defecting to UKIP really big news in the grand scheme of things? People quit political parties every day. People move from one political party to another every day. It isn’t big news and it isn’t that important. It won’t change the day to day lives of anyone and it won’t cause even a ripple with the electorate but on twitter it is news. It is real news. It is something that needs to be discussed and now.
I first saw tweets about a defection to UKIP so I went on to Google News and saw nothing. I did a twitter search and nothing came up straight away and then after a bit of scrolling I saw what it was all about. In the half an hour or so since there have been 100s of tweets with the term ‘UKIP’ in them and mostly about this.
I sometimes ask myself how many people on twitter really live in the real world. I have always tried to use twitter from a distance. I don’t think I have met anyone via twitter and very rarely get involved in a discussion about politics on there because people are too dug into their own positions and you can’t have a real conversation about politics in a series of tweets of 140 characters.
Yet others feel differently. They think that a big deal on twitter is actually a big deal. This I think is extremely wide of the mark.
As I said. I don’t care if this person has defected to UKIP or not. I just don’t understand why it is a big deal and yet look – I’ve written over 400 words on it on a Sunday evening. Oh boy…
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