Twitter vs Rollerball
Did you catch any of the CNN/Ashton Kutcher Twitter race at the end of last week, as they both raced to one million followers?
Was it just me, or was anyone else reminded of the movie Rollerball from the mid 1970’s — the violent, full-contact “sport” on TV set in 2018, where as things got more gory, the ratings soared?
The follower numbers, jumping 1000’s per hour… is Twitter the 2009 web equivalent of mass crowd behaviour? Voyeurism? Do one million people really want to hear what Ashton Kutcher has to say? Or are they fascinated by the “drama” and drawn in like motorists who slow down to check out a car accident on the other side of the road?
Or is it, as in the speech Kutcher gave when he hit the million mark first, about media democracy, public control of what is reported, without the filters of the big networks? The “new guard” of information publishing, uncensored and in our control?
I’m sure many theories will come forward over coming months.
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