Joseph Pearson has a great essay in the June issue of Meanjin, reviewing the technological and social changes undermining anonymity on the internet. Along the way, he observes the wrong and right ways to engage with a “social media” audience:
It is a Dadaist landscape. Personality quirks are writ large. … And into this landscape, social networks are beginning to reinsert traditional celebrities, real-world celebrities, long relegated by the internet to nipple-slip curiosities. Many are taking their cue from US political campaigning, which began this incursion, to offer limp PR tidbits; recognisable but unexciting. The personalities who flourish in this environment are the ones who engage with it, who have an external profile large enough to generate initial interest, but then get down off their pedestals and talk ordinary. Or as US basketball star Shaquille O’Neal puts it on Twitter: “even the aliens no mee, da ones real far, i speak to them like ibadablaa, Jigamagla, bockeraa.”
This paragraph explains why I don’t follow Australia’s politician tweeters; what I want from Kevin Rudd is less “dependen[ce] on his minions” and more paying out on Oprah.