Quick Thoughts on the Twitter Community’s Reaction to Sunday’s Events

May 11th, 2009 • Communities

If you’re from Toronto, unless you are living under a rock, you’re well aware of the Tamil protests that have been taking place over the last month or so. Last night, things escalated with the protesters physically closing the Gardiner until just after midnight. I’m not going to touch the nature of the protest, or the pros and cons against what it is that they did. (I think Torontoist has an interesting piece on a for and against here, although the two sides aren’t directly arguing against each other.)

To me, the interesting part was watching our community react to it. For once, possibly for the first time since I started using Twitter heavily, I finally saw real interactions taking place. People who usually spend a lot of time supporting each others ideas were suddenly placed at odds – and what’s more, they interacted and argued with each others’ viewpoints in a rational manner. Yes, there were a few ad hominem attacks, but by and large, these were well thought out, well-structured debates. I’m so used to the Toronto Twitter community being a bastion of support that I was initially shocked – but as the conversations continued, not only did I find that I joined in, but that I suddenly felt that I knew more about those that were participating. People’s public personas were dropped in favour of real personal opinions – and it was a great thing. If we had more interactions like this, not only would we help educate others and ourselves on issues which we may not understand, but we would also advance ideas and theories to levels where they could be successful. As I’ve said previously, not every idea is a good one (duh), and most can benefit from feedback and reshaping. Why do we seem afraid to do that?

Last night was a polarizing issue that demonstrated the power that we have to do this; let’s not wait for the next polarizing issue to come our way to have these real interactions again. Nobody benefits from a lovefest.

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