“What are you doing?” That’s the simple, no-fuss question Twitter asks. And it seems that despite Twitter’s 140 character limit, users are only too willing to share everything and anything. From the deeply personal to the seemingly inane, there is no holding back. Call it emotional vomit. Or maybe exhibitionism 2.0 for those who don’t have what it takes to strut their stuff in the nude but still want the thrill of exposing and revealing the taboo for all to see.

Regardless of what you label it or whether or not you care what people are doing, with an estimated 6 million registered Twitter users and 44.5 million unique visitors in June alone it’s clear that Twitter is fulfilling a societal need. The question is what. What is that makes people willing share and document the intimate details and mundane happenings of their life and to do so in a very public way?

To get a better sense of how willing to share Twitter users are, I used a Twitter search engine to find tweets about topics you wouldn’t ordinarily share with the strangers you pass in the street. The search results, below, were not surprising.

Marriage

blessedamerican said:

“Celebrating 15yrs with the greatest man I know. I am truly blessed by my marriage and his love for me.”

Love

HollyJKDavis said to jordanknight :

“Good Morning handsome!! Hope your foot is doing good…Can’t wait to see some dance moves……love ya”

Divorce

morriscraiga said:

“Having a fantastic day, divorce finalised, time now to restart and rebuild my life”

Birth

theaimage said:

“Congratulations to my brother Garrick and his wife Kimiko who just gave birth to a another beautiful baby girl!”

Twitter is a cesspool of thoughts and feelings that belong in someone’s personal diary and yet have been vomited into the void of cyberspace. And there, in cyberspace, these tweets become immortalised, accessible by anyone at anytime. And that is the power of Twitter. It has nothing to do with who reads the tweets or whether or not they care. Twitter is about venting and sharing and getting it off your chest. It provides the Twitter user with a safe space to process things and some catharsis.

There are other sites or platforms that allow a user to vent and share. Postsecret , for example, is a site where users can anonymously mail any thought on one side of a postcard. These thoughts are then posted on the site. There is also fmlife.com , a site where people share and vent about moments from their day that were funny, irritating or simply unfortunate and ruined a perfectly good day. Again, this is done anonymously. What makes Twitter and Twitter venting unique, is that all venting takes places within the confines of a community created and controlled by the Twitter user. With Twitter venting, anything shared is not simply being dumped into a void but being shared with a community which can empathize and perhaps offer words of comfort or the odd bit of advice. It’s a type of dialogue or, if you like, quick-fix therapy. And the beauty of it is that a user can have the support of a community and still remain anonymous.

You may not care. Why would you? Tweets are the leftovers after a good meal. They are the scraps you’d rather toss than eat. And that’s the point of Twitter. Those who moan: “I don’t care”. They are the ones who miss the point. Who have little, if any understanding of Twitter. See, Twitter has nothing to do with the reader. Although for voyeurs, it may provide some interesting insight and a behind the scenes peek. There are also occasions when information or links to articles of interest are shared via Twitter. And that is useful. But Twitter’s real utility is for the writer who is given a safe space to vent. Twitter therapy, I like to call it. Ever heard of stream of consciousness? Well, Twitter is stream of consciousness gone digital.

Stream of consciousness involves expressing thoughts in a random, disorganised manner without self-censoring or any regard for punctuation or spelling. Twitter is the perfect platform for this. It encourages venting and has become a forum for stream of consciousness where users seem to write about whatever it is that comes to mind. The power of stream of consciousness is that it hints at what is happening at the level of the subconscious:

It is worthy to remark that transposing our streams of thought through mediums like words and paintings defile and even expunge the underpinnings of a person’s consciousness.

Studies have been done which link expressive writing, in the form of stream of consciousness, to an improvement of the health and general well-being of children suffering from post traumatic distress disorder. The studies found that writing about traumatic events gives the victim a sense of control and power over the trauma. The victim is able to able to turn the traumatic event into a manageable narrative. Twitter provides users with a space for stream of consciousness. A space to vent. But it could also be used for trauma debriefing as the victim is given control not only of a narrative but of a community of Twitter followers.

These are the things people should keep in mind the next time they criticise Twitter. They should stop and ask themselves why Twitter has so many dedicated users. What it is these ‘Twits’ get from Twitter that they cannot get elsewhere. And how Twitter can and perhaps is already helping people in need. If used properly, Twitter can be a powerful and very cathartic tool.

And for a while I sat in amused silence. In mild shock. And processed this. I had given my friend two options : Oprah or the school girl from Afghanistan maimed with acid for wanting an education. “Whose daily musings would you be most interested in?” I asked. Oprah? This made no sense to me. Oprah?  After all, what value and insight could a celebratory, who is bound to see a microblogging service like Twitter as a free PR, image-bolstering channel, add? That’s what I was trying to understand. And while may friend explained, nothing she said was compelling enough to help me reach that level of tinsel-town enlightenment where Oprah has a God-like glow and I decide to follow her on Twitter.

But just because I wasn’t budging that doesn’t mean the rest of the twitosphere felt the same. After only a day on Twitter Oprah has a following of 248,630 people and counting. And in true Oprah style her first tweet was sent live on her TV show with the help of another Twitter celebratory whose name has been dominating the Twitosphere: Ashton Kutcher.

See Kutcher was the winner of the recent Twitter race to one million Twitter followers which had been raging between him and the news organisation CNN. As part of this publicity stunt, Kutcher promised to donate 10 000 mosquito nets to a charity for World Malaria day if he won and 1000 if he lost. Not a bad deal. But it doesn’t stop there; Oprah and CNN now also plan to donate to this cause. So what are all the Twitter veterans and those few dissenters moaning about?

Kutcher is now the King of Twitter. And Oprah is fast become the queen. It didn’t take long for these celebrities to not only become the most popular Twitter users but to dominate conversation in the twitosphere. And that’s where part of the problem comes in. I think some veteran Twits may have bruised egos for these celebrities didn’t have to work too hard for their Twitter success. But they miss the point.  Since these celebrities made their presence known on Twitter that has come to dominate many tweets. Twitter was meant to be a space free and separate from mainstream media. Instead now the twitosphere has become a space for more celebrity worship and gossip to thrive. How exciting.

Kutcher tried to make his Twitter victory seem like a victory of the individual against mainstream media. He talked about democratisation of media and how instrumental Twitter is in this process. Nice try Kutcher but you can’t play that card. This is Ashton Kutcher and Oprah we’re talking about after all. No average Joe, no matter how interesting, could rival their fan bases. Also Ashton had a well-established offline fan following and the help of 1,133 digital billboards. You can’t beat that!

Twitter was meant to be an open space where people built a reputation based on the quality if their tweets. Now the rules have changed. And we can thank Oprah and Ashton for that. It’s now a type of popularity contest where everyone hopes to be retweeted by a celebrity. Because if that happens you can lie back and know you’ve made it. Ignore content. And quality. Ignore those voices that Twitter was meant to help bring to the fore. This is now a playground for the big kids and unless you are one of them you have very little chance of influencing the news agenda.

Yes anyone can set up a Twitter account. Tweet. And share their daily life, thoughts and experiences with the world. But this isn’t true citizen media. The same rules still apply. The few influencing the many. That’s how mainstream media works, remember?  So go ahead … tweet away. Maybe someone somewhere will care. But for now, brace yourself for many retweets as these celebrities make themselves at home.

I could never claim to be a twitter-box (a twitter chatterbox) or twitter-lebratory. I don’t have hoards of followers who hang on my every word, retweeting as they see fit. And I doubt any of my carefully crafted 140-character tweets have been turned into mantras. No, I’m certainly not one of those A list twitter-users (twits?) with a behind the scenes ghost-writer or a VIP seat at every tweet-up. But there is a part of the twitosphere that is filled with my tweets. And for me that is enough. Sometimes it’s nothing of particular interest to anyone. It’s just something I want to get off my chest or show people. And so I do.

So as far as twits go, I’m the new girl on the block. And yet, twitter has had an impact on my life. I don’t mean in the sense that I feel the need to unleash a daily torrent of tweets describing my breakfast and how I really need to get a haircut or some sleep. I’m a relatively disciplined twit who only has the occasional emotional tweet-splurge.

My Twitter moment is quite simple. It involves another twit, @nivcalderon. Now he belongs to the ranks of the retweetable twits. I guess you could call him one of the Twitter grandmasters. He and I met through Twitter at a time when I was thinking of moving to Israel. He proved to be the perfect sounding board: an Israeli with knowledge of Israeli media, something I would give my eyeteeth to be a part of.

A year later, I did move to Israel and Niv and I met in person. Still preoccupied and perhaps a little obsessed with getting a job in Israeli media, I explained to him how I’d had very little success doing so. And he listened. He made a few suggestions. And then offered to help. That’s when I had my Twitter moment.

See he used Twitter as a space to introduce me to his followers. Sent out 2 tweets: tweet 1 and tweet 2. He also uploaded a picture of me to twitpic. Within seconds of doing so I had at least 5 new people following me on Twitter. One of his followers started following me simply because I was a friend of his. You can’t ignore the power of Twitter, if you know how use it that is. And ok I didn’t get a job out of that Twitter experiment but I made some contacts that may come in handy.

These Twitter moments are certainly not unique to me though. Recently a California woman admitted via Twitter that she planned to commit suicide. Demi Moore picked up on this cry for help and retweeted the message to her many fan-followers. Because of Twitter, the suicide attempt was stopped. There is also the case of the journalist, James Earl Buck, who was arrested in Egypt while covering an anti-government protest. And with one simple tweet he was able to inform family, friends and all his follows of his predicament. Arrested – that’s all his tweet said. He was able to use this tweet to get in touch with that network of people and secure his freedom.

And then there are the recent protests in Moldova which are being flagged as the first Twitter revolution. The protests were in response to election results which many believed were rigged. Online social media applications, like Twitter, played a role in organising these protests. Moldovan-based Twitter users started using the tag (hashtag) #pman, which stands for Piata Marii Adunari Nationale, Chisinau’s central square in their messages. This was their cryptic way of organising a meeting place for the protesters. There were at least 10 000 protestors who showed up. Because of Twitter, you’re probably wondering?

There are some things that you need to consider. And maybe they’ll convince you that the hype around this Moldovan Twitter Revolution is just that … hype. For example , there are only 70 Twitter users who specify their location as Moldova. Some are suggesting that this ‘revolution’ was actually organised remotely by Moldovans abroad. Some also suggest that too much credit is given to Twitter as the mobilizing tool for the Chisinau central square is a natural place for people to gather and given the tense political climate Moldovans would need little incentive to join a protest.

So perhaps it wasn’t solely a Twitter-orchestrated revolution. But you can’t ignore the role played by Twitter. The organisers, regardless of where they were, did a good job flooding the twitosphere with tweets related to the protest giving it more coverage. Twitter also allowed for decentralized protests where you didn’t have to be in Moldova to play some role and make your voice heard.

On the level of both the personal and the political twitter is causing reverberations that extend behind the twitosphere. The interesting thing is that these reverberations are having an impact offline. And people are turning to what has been mocked as a blogging application for those with too much time and too few friends to affect change. To me, twitter revolutions are happening every day. Maybe not in as dramatic a form as the Moldovan flash mob. But I just think of the daily triumphs and achievements like the suicide which Twitter helped prevent … and well to me that’s a type of revolution. One in which the average person is given a front row seat to their world. No more passive consumption of media. Now you; me; everyone can have a say and play more of an active role in society. The biggest mistake you can make is to see Twitter as geek-hype. If nothing else, that’s a lesson we should all take away from Moldova.

This started off as a typical Aliyah blog: a homesick blogging experiment that looks at life in Israel through the eyes of a tourist. You know the type of blogs I’m talking about. They talk about how even the simplest conversations seem to happen over some hummus and pita. Or the bus-paranoia blogs written mostly by those new to Jerusalem; those who haven’t quite moved past the intifada –days and sit on buses with sweaty palms, waiting for the explosion.

And that was almost the fate of my blog. But I’ve made peace with it. I’m on a bus every day. I’ve signed up to be an organ donor. And that puts my mind at ease. What more can I do? Should something happen on a bus; well whatever is left of me can be put to good use. But short of signing up to be an organ donor; I feel no need to hold my blog hostage to the fear of terror. Life goes on.

But I also have no intention of viewing life here through the eyes of a tourist any longer. I will always be a South African at heart. But I’m sick of this mixture of overly sentimental homesick and humus gunk that most blogs of a similar vein seem to churn out.

But have no fear. There will still be some churning. Just of a different nature. I was sitting in class today – I’m studying Hebrew at an Ulpan in Jerusalem. And today’s lesson had something to do with family. We learnt the word for grandchild in Hebrew – the word eludes me at the moment. Anyway, my teacher has 9 of those cute little critters. And then she started telling us about her kids. By the end of it, she had to leave the class and quite a few of the people in my class were in tears.

She had 8 children. Had. Her one son was killed in the recent Lebanon war. My teacher is always singing and you have to really stalk her to find her without a smile on her face. Today I saw a side of her that broke my heart; I saw a woman I don’t think I’ll ever have the strength to be. A saw a mother who will probably always grieve for her 26 year old son. And all I could think about was there how there must be something Twitter can do.

A silly microblogging service. That’s what you’re thinking right? Just admit it. I’m not crazy, I assure you. Nor am I cold-hearted. I was one of the people with tears in my eyes as she told her story. But that’s exactly why I thought of Twitter – I believe in the power of mobile technology. I think it is going to change media as we know it and perhaps the way we lead our lives. So who knows, maybe there is something Twitter can do.

I want this to become a space where I see my time in Israel not through tourist’s sunglasses but through the eyes of mobile technology; where almost anything is possible. This is going to be my space to vent and discuss all things mobile. Because I believe the future of media is mobile and that means exciting things for how we live our lives.

I’ve been in Israel for just under a week. And while the world has sat around condemning this country wanting to lynch her for the recent Gaza debacle I’ve been experiencing life as just another Israeli.

Yes, I’m now a citizen of this land of falafels and shrapnel. I’m now Israeli. Well, legally at least. But it feels more like a mantra. Like something I need to say over and over again and then repeat one more time just for good measure. Something I need to convince myself of.

“Nicole you are Israeli”

But like anything you need to practice or convince yourself of , I feel like a cheap imitation as a walk the streets of Israel. I never know when I’m being ripped off. Is 14 Shekels reasonable for some carrot juice? I don’t know. Is it normal for bus drivers to ignore you when you ask them in perfectly polite English if the bus is going to East Talpiot, where I now stay? Again, I don’t know.

The past few days have been a blur of I-don’t-knows. And boy, have they whizzed passed in flurry of Hebrew confusion. See I’ve opened a bank account. I’ve decided with no real research or understanding on what health insurance best suits me, a skill that you should really be taught at school. Such seemingly menial tasks but they feel more like feats. See when everything is in Hebrew it’s not as simple as signing on the dotted line. Of course you sign. Well I did and in a very uncharacteristically Israeli way, without any fuss. And all that most newcomers can do in such situations is sign and hope for the best.

I’m starting to think that that is how much of the Israeli population gets through the day to day stresses of life here. By taking that leap of faith and believing in the power of either God or the army. How else do you explain it?

I spent Saturday with a friend, visiting a family who live in Beit Shemesh, 46km from Gaza. I took a walk through the streets of this city. It was shabbos, the Jewish Sabbath, which means that for those who choose to observe, life gets put on hold. There’s no driving, using cell-phones or watching TV. Anything that creates or is considered work is a taboo on shabbos.

I don’t observe but I took a walk. Found a bench and watched life. There were children, laughing, having fun, and playing. I saw two women, the one heavily pregnant, modestly talking among themselves. But such normal, peaceful life and all I could think about was what was happening 46km away and how oblivious these people were. Sitting on this bench all that I’d read in the news over the past few weeks seemed to just disappear and disintegrate.

At least until twirls of white appeared in the perfectly blue sky. And no, these weren’t clouds. They were from aircrafts. Israeli aircrafts flying over the area I guess. I was standing in the garden with the children of the family we went to visit. And they noticed these white, figure of 8 twirls.

“What are they,” the one child asked

And the other replied: “It’s best not to know”

And for that explains how the average Israeli is dealing with this war in Gaza. Even those who have children fighting on the frontline. It seems the best mechanism of defence these people have is not to know. On the flight to Israel I sat next to a woman who has two sons fighting – I think the one is in Gaza. And maybe it’s just a front but she seemed resigned even nonchalant. The war, the army, the guns, the deaths. They are part of what it means to be Israeli. They’re normal. And I’m not too sure I’m ready to accept them.

Perhaps that lesson was a long overdue nudge in the right direction; to ensure the ancient, unspoken rules that govern social interaction remain untarnished. Heaven forbid Jews and Muslims ever cross paths and the idea that they could actually be friends, well that was improbable.

But there you have it. She was my best friend. She, the Muslim. Me, the Jew. And it worked, for a while. The two of us exploring childhood together. The two of us swopping stickers and playing dress up with our Barbie dolls. Once or twice we even took out the scissors and trimmed our Barbie’s hair. And sometimes at the end of it all our Barbies looked more like transvestites trying to grow out their Mohawks. But we had fun and I learnt to be quite creative with synthetic, blond hair.

And of course no childhood friendship would be complete without the magic of Disney, tartrazine and lots of sugar. And these were the things we never ran short of. And laughter. There was plenty of that too.

But we grew up and the laughter ran out. It was in primary school. Grade 4. There was a group of us and I was the only starry-eyed one. The only Jew. And boy they made that pretty clear. Not only was I starry-eyed but I was not welcome.

“Nicole, you can’t sit here anymore. You’re a Jew”.

And now, 13 years later I’ve decided to make Aliyah (to immigrate to the holy land). I’ve filled out the forms. And have started gathering the documents needed to prove I’m Jewish. Yes, you actually need to prove it. It’s not enough that ever since I can remember I’ve had strangers approach me as though they were doing some sort of census. So are you Greek? No, Italian? You must be Portuguese, they’d say to me feeling triumphant as though they’d solved some unfathomable mystery. As though finding out where I could be placed in the pecking order of life would make them feel fulfilled. Why else would they do it?

Poor me, huh? I got such a rough deal. And this is the part where I give you my bank account details so you can contribute to the fund I’ve set up. The I-am-Jewish-so-you-should-feel-sorry-for-me-fund. Ok, not really. But it’s also not the part where I tell you that me making Aliyah has to do with some innate Zionistic desire. To be honest, a part of me is disgusted by the state of Israel. But who am I to talk , I’m not Israeli. So it certainly isn’t Zionism that is driving me.

I can’t explain it, I think being singled out and told you can’t do something because you’re a Jew may have something to do with it. See now more than ever I am curious about what it means to be a Jew. And a part of me hopes that Israel will have some of those answers.

So for those of you that I’ve told about making Aliyah. And those of you that have given me the “Why Israel” response try and understand. It sounds crazy. But for the first time in my life I feel that this is something that I need to do not because someone is telling me to but because if I don’t my life will be empty and meaningless ; the worst type of life to lead.

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