I am restricting my contact with my fellow human beings to brief, and occasionally hostile exchanges on the internet.
A while ago a certain back bench Tory politician raised the issue of Twitter on her blog. I think they call it Twittergate and if they don’t then they should. She asked what at the time must have seemed like a perfectly valid question except that she did this in overtly hostile tones. She wondered whether people who incessantly use Twitter – people with disabilities – should be out there seeking employment because their twittering habit clearly indicated that at the very least they were computer literate. There was a nugget of reasoned debate in the the future (mixed in) that followed this. Some regular tweeters argued that for them twitter was a lifeline, sometimes it was their only connection to the outside world. And this, they said, could only be a ‘good thing’. I’m sure that may be true for some people, perhaps even many people, this may be true. But there are those of us who haven’t really been helped by the expansion of online social networking. Those of us who were isolated in the first place. In some cases it may exacerbate their condition, especially if they have issues with social anxiety at the outset. For there really is no substitute for real live flesh and blood companionship. The internet is a poor substitute for that.
