I do some poking around Twitter beyond my own circle of people I'm following, but not a lot, because I tend to regret it if I were to, for instance, click on a trending topic. That's where all the pornography and swearing hangs out. (I wish I were making this up.) (And yes, I have innocent eyes.)
But two trends that come and go fairly regularly are "things black people say" and "things white people say". And when I have ventured to click and find out what's going on, there are inevitably a few things that I find:
1. A lot of the tweets are more along the lines of things parents say. It's like a little trip down memory lane for some people.
2. About half the tweets are correcting other tweets ("no, white people don't say that!").
3. And there are a handful of people complaining that the trending topic is racist.
Even when these topics aren't trending, they are still common enough hashtags to be searchable; I looked just now and found a page of each, all posted in the past couple of hours.
I've had completely different experiences with trending topics. I usually check these on my phone when I'm on the bus or just plain bored. I've frequently found entertaining topics. I am not very knowledgeable in pop culture, and I've found that some trending topics are actually educational an informative. I'm thinking that maybe the time that we look up trending topics is to blame for these differences?
ReplyDeleteI am with Anairis. I have had a different experience with trending topics. They aggregate conversations and allow for people to discuss a pressing issue, or at least a pressing issue in the minds of the Twitterverse. These spaces are certainly spammed heavily, but I don't think this discounts their potential for constructive conversation.
ReplyDeleteIt also depends on what the topic is-- I used these two examples for our in-class sharing about race markers the other day, but they are definitely among the worst for attracting spam. Generally speaking, I only click on trending topics that interest me, and I do usually find some interesting stuff (although I also think they devolve into a re-tweet fest pretty quickly). However, I'm not ready yet to call them constructive. Potential, maybe, but we aren't there yet, especially when a significant portion of the tweets are merely asking why this topic is trending.
ReplyDeleteI've actually had the same experience with trending topics. I click on them, thinking I might get a good joke I can tell later, or something like that, and am generally let down by the poor grammar and blatant race separation. I often feel like if I used any of the hashtags in my own tweets that I'd be an obvious outcast or that my followers and friends would think me odd for using such tags. I use them occasionally, "#justsayin" or recently, while watching debate on the Texas House floor, "#outoftouch", but I never feel quite right about the idea of joining in on trending topics.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and Jenna. I have not had very good experiences with trending topics either. They always seem to dissolve into either argument or something totally irrelevent.
ReplyDelete