[They inform us, they amuse us, they entertain us, they exasperate us — all this, in 140 characters or fewer. The biggest benefit of Twitter has been to democratize information, insight, humour; to take ‘content’ out of the hands of the ‘traditional’ media, and to create/empower a community of ‘curators’ through whose filters we increasingly see the world around us.
It is a vast, vibrant community — and ‘140 Characters’, a new series on Yahoo! India Blog — is an attempt both to sample that community, and to pay it the homage that is overdue. Ever so often, we bring you one ‘Character’, one person on Twitter we like and recommend that you follow, as these are people who will enrich your life for knowing them. So — drumroll — here’s ‘Supergirl’:]
In the real world, acquaintance begins with a name; over time, we gather more detail and, as the person’s ‘profile’ gradually fills out, our reactions to the person — like, dislike, indifference — crystallize.
It’s different in the online world, where often, the reaction comes first. We ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ someone based on a whim, a fancy, a nicely done display picture or mind-tingling tweet, and we decide to ‘follow’ that person. Our ‘acquaintance’ is constructed of random, unconnected bits and pieces, all coming together in a patchwork-quilt ‘profile’ as incomplete as it can be startlingly intimate.
Take the person who, on Twitter, is known by the handle MumbaiCentral. [You can follow her here]. When that handle first surfaces on your timeline, god knows how, you deduce the person lives/works in, or has some core connection with, that area of Mumbai. On a whim, you hit the ‘follow’ button, and you think no more about it.
And then, over time, random posts float by. Like this:
Ah, so: ‘Mumbai Central’ is female, and married; she likes fine-dining and is possibly romantic in nature; she is not too hung up/snobby about the fine-dining bit, though, since she seems well-versed with the crowded cafes of the Matunga region; she keeps cheese — fine cheese, not those cheesy Amul cubes — in the fridge and is possibly fond of wine — possibly fine wine — to go with it…
It’s like doing a jigsaw where you don’t know what the finished image looks like. You fit a piece here, a piece there, constructing an image that may, or may not, bear some resemblance to the original; you keep slotting in the pieces as they surface in random order, and you end up liking the finished portrait. Or not.
Earlier this week, a series of posts surfaced on Mumbai Central’s timeline. Like, so:
That first post, about the Mumbai police, skims by unnoticed; it will acquire relevance only in light of subsequent revelations. What is Twitter for, after all, if not to crib — about the weather, the government, the batsman who cannot score runs or the bowler who cannot take wickets, to rant at life itself?
But as the posts accumulate in rapid succession, more pieces to the puzzle come to hand; the portrait begins to gain depth, dimension. ‘Mumbai Central’ is a lawyer. She is combative, feisty, and — remarkably in a world where we step around a stricken person on the street and go our way rather than get involved — she is prepared to go the extra mile [Mumbai Central to Chembur, at rush hour, during the monsoon, is a lot of extra miles] to fight injustice.
Within those first few tweets, we are riveted by the sense of a developing story; we constantly refresh our own timelines for updates. Where till moments ago ‘Mumbai Central’ was just another handle floating past on a crowded timeline, she becomes the handle we seek as we refresh, and refresh again.
By now dozens, possibly hundreds, of us are totally into the developing story; some asking for clarifications, others offering directions, yet others offering unspecified help. And all this while, ‘MumbaiCentral’ is battling the city’s insane rush hour traffic; frustration shows in an expletive-laden update on the jam at Priyadarshini Circle, a notorious choke-point on the Sion-Trombay Road just before you enter Chembur proper. And then, this:
The original audience has by now grown exponentially, thanks to dozens of re-tweets. Some of us discuss the propensity of the police to disregard all norms of procedure; others tell of their own experiences with authority. Thanks to a young woman, we have suddenly become, albeit momentarily, a community with a commonality.
Congratulations and complements flood ‘MumbaiCentral’s’ timeline in profusion. And the feisty lawyer who without thought had set off on a crusade against the Mumbai cops turns into a somewhat shy young woman, unwittingly caught in the spotlight of mass attention and unsure quite how to handle it. Her reaction is typical of those the spotlight has to seek out, rather than those who seek the spotlight: an expletive-inflected post that marvels at her ow reaction to praise; immediately following, a polite thank you couched in the stilted vocabulary of the suddenly shy.
The saga is at an end — but this one has shelf-life, an impact beyond the immediate. Through three hours of a rainy Tuesday evening, ‘Mumbai Central’ has grown to a greater understanding of how much the rule of law means to her; of what she is capable of if she puts her mind to it. The realization, one suspects, will infuse her work, and her life, from here on.
And those of us who followed her crusade, fingers crossed for her to come out of it safe, have grown with her — to a sheepish, somewhat shame-faced understanding of our own apathy and to a realization, however temporary, that when confronted with injustice it is necessary to do more than frame it in 140 characters; the awareness that sometimes, the choice is between getting our hands dirty in the fight or losing a little bit of our soul to apathy and indifference.
And in course of this shared journey, ‘MumbaiCentral’ has somehow gone from being a handle to being a friend you respect and are glad to know. You still don’t have a name for her, or a face. Unless she looks like her display picture , you wouldn’t be able to pick her out in a crowd to say hello to, to congratulate [oh by the way, if you are her Twitter friend, don’t presume on that to hug her when you first meet her in person — she doesn’t like that; another fact gleaned from a passing tweet].
You don’t have any of the details that are the early building blocks of an offline friendship — but in the online world, somehow, none of that seems to matter.
Here’s MumbaiCentral — go make a friend.
Also read: #1 of 140 Characters: Ramesh Srivats
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