Virtual life
A second characteristic of Twitter is virtuality. This concept includes the meaning of possibilities. Physical and temporal limitations matter little. Twitter is a café that is always open and nearby. The uncomfortable thing about a virtual environment is the obvious mediated nature of all activities. I am not in a café. Instead, I am on a city bus among fellow passengers whose backs I can only see bent over smartphones. Where is there still direct contact? How long before I also spend my birthday party on Twitter?
The preference for unmediated contact has a long tradition in our culture. We can even recall Plato's cave myth. malaysia phone number list In his famous metaphor, Plato presents human beings as cave dwellers who are unaware that there is a world outside the cave. Because they are tied up, with their backs to the exit, they see only the shadows of themselves cast by a fire on the cave wall.
The cave dweller is also the archetype of the tweeter. He or she sits – for example in a bus – with their back to reality, producing shadowy signs instead of looking up at the reality around them. They do not speak, but write. That alone is uncomfortable. Plato himself had serious doubts about writing as a medium. The truth could best be approached in the living conversation from person to person. Not mediated by language and sign, but in a lively conversation from person to person. The sounds well up directly from the chest, no gesture or nuance is lost. You cannot get much closer to the source. We have seen repeated doubts about the loss of direct contact when the printing press and the telephone came into being.