Is it just me, or did FaceBook lose some of it’s significance, and Twitter blow up in 2012? In 2011, we were still buzzing off the phenomenal success of FB and the Hollywood movie, The Social Network. Trouble arose in 2012 however, when FB went public on the stock exchange. Over-speculation caused their stock to open at $38 per share and lose value in a matter of weeks to somewhere close to where it is now. The market has the IPO trading at around $26 per share, causing stockholders to lose billions . So for those who thought FB was going to be a stunning success, they were sadly disappointed so far.
FaceBook stock falls
This may be due to some shaky FaceBook moves relating to the use of its members personal information, or the rise of other forms of social networking. Twitter has become a normal part of everyday life too. The 2012 Presidential election helped to push that. When people ducked interviews and didn’t make public comments, journalists looked to politicians Tweets to find out what was on their minds. In order to get the quickest access to what your favorite celebrities were saying, you only needed to click the Follow button on their Twitter page. Thus, overwhelmingly in 2012, people began following.
Rise in Twitter Followers (Nordic Countries)
The first Pope on Twitter
Most Tweeted pic ever.
With somewhere around 500 million users, Twitter is rapidly growing while Facebook, with around 1 billion users, has had slowing growth. The consciousness behind such a change, is that people are following trends more in sound-bite size. Twitter is built for that. Even celebrities, once known for their original personalities, have become trend-trolling, swag-stealing, biters like many of their fans. What else can explain the tights and jeggings style of men’s fashion? It’s simply a trend.
Jeggings
Conan O’Brien in jeggings
Tight clothes are awkward and dysfunctional because they allow for no growth or freedom of movement. Tight clothes are literally worn to be fit in. You must fit in to tight clothes as opposed to oversize clothing which covers most anyone. Twitter and tight clothes are surface-level examples of an underlying connected thought process. It is an underlying mentality to conform, fit in and follow. The clothes and behavior are just symptoms of the mentality.
Following is a mentality that can be seen physically in the style sometimes. Tight clothes, unless they are stretch jeans or tights, restrict the movement. They are not designed for broad movements. They are more for looking good in still pictures. A person in tight clothes is anticipating being seen by others to whom they wish to silently say, “Look at me and my body in my form-hugging tight clothes. Can you can see my ass?” Tight clothes are for people who like to pose in pictures.
They can’t have any allusion of doing something active and looking good at the same time. Tight clothes are for posers. A poser, in slang terminology, is a fake or a phony; someone who only dresses the part. A poser is the definition of a follower. A poser is almost like a stalker, except they follow movements instead of individuals. They simply seek to look like they are part of the movement, whatever it is.
Being a follower is not all bad though. Everyone follows someone or something, and they should. Any one person doesn’t have all the answers to all the questions of life. At some point, even every leader must follow advisers and take instruction. The problem with the Twitter mentality, is that you can literally follow anybody. Complete buffoons can have legions of followers. And minus the buffoons, people who are just wrong can still have legions of followers too. Sometimes the buffoons with legions of followers get trending topics discussed as much, and sometimes more than the sensible people.
Just look at Fox, so-called News. Their followers have been consistently shown to be more ignorant about basic facts, than people who watch no news at all. It’s become obvious that they follow the wrong people. People who backed Mitt Romney for president followed the wrong man and those who still fought Obama’s Healthcare Bill as unconstitutional, went against voter rights, women’s rights and gay rights, followed the wrong trend. All those issues lost in a majority decision, with the election of 2012.
Mitt and Ann Romney laughing about the President
The good thing about Twitter is that you can unfollow someone with the click of a mouse button. So, while some choose to be led down the wrong path, others can easily jump ship, before it crashes. Although I only began tweeting less than a month ago, I’m still ambivalent about the whole Twitter thing. Still, the question is not if you should follow, but who should you follow?
One, @KurtNiceHHL
Kurt Nice
Kurt Nice aka Kurtiss Jackson is a behind the scenes pioneer in the Hip Hop Kulture, creating the first nationally distributed video mix tape series, Shades of Hip Hop, in the late 1990s. Since touring the country with the Stop the Violence Movement and the Temple of Hip Hop as KRS-ONE’s National Marketing Director, Kurt Nice has been a constant commentator on conscious Hip Hop and its relevance to the new rap music of today, through radio and cable appearances. contact Kurt at info@hiphoplives.net
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