It’s amazing that as a society we have the potential to actually reduce ourselves to rubble in both the metaphorical sense and the literal one. What’s remarkable though is how much of a fantastic tool Twitter turned out to be as a result of all of the nonsense that went on.
I’ve been a sporadic user of Twitter myself. I went through periods of tweeting my every action to long spells of nothing. One thing I never really did was actually LOOK at the twitter feed for any length of time. Now, I know that sounds like watching paint dry, but after looking long and hard it became clear that this is the closest we have ever gotten to a tangible, realistic social stream of consciousness, bar eventually plugging ourselves into our computers.
As I watched the feed I was alerted to so much violence and disruption happening all around me. I wouldn’t have had any idea unless I’d actually been in the zone, but Twitter provided an ‘on the ground’ perspective from those people actually experiencing the riots.
I could join in with the chorus of damnation coming from everyone discussing how awful it all was, but to be honest we all know that and there isn’t much point spelling it out again. I mean I am a born and bred Londoner. London is and has been my home for the last twenty six (almost twenty seven) years. I have lived in most of the areas which were pulled down by these idiots, however look at something positive that came out of what happened; modern technology was proved to be a social boon.
You can also say that Twitter allowed these people to plan the event but nothing was done on Twitter that couldn’t be achieved via email, Blackberry Messenger, SMS or actual phone calls whereas the stream of news and updates about the riots were much more beneficial.
Of course the main thing that came out of the mess was that fantastic hashtag which really showed what Londoners and the British really represent; #RiotCleanUp
