GregoryBowers.com

Someone mentioned how Shaquille O’Neil is using Twitter now (really!) last night, and my curiosity got the better of me. I started following Shaq’s tweets, and the surreal nature is yet another piece in the puzzle.

What puzzle? The death of a soap box. I spoke with Kevin the other night about how he’d just added me on Twitter, and how “private” soap boxing tends to die off.

What is private soap boxing? Well, soap boxing, as you probably know, is the term for ranting publicly about something—people used to get up on a crate or soap box in a public square to announce, decry, or proselytise something. How can this be “private,” you say? It involves the concept of spilling your guts to strangers or “internet” friends. These people rarely know you, or know you in a manner as to generally let rants and worries be taken at face value. They do not know your life story. They don’t generally see you on a daily basis. What you say can be heard by them, and answered, processed… but it rarely affects your normal life. Private soap boxing is just this: ranting, spilling, commenting, et al, without fear of those close to you getting tied up in it. If you have a frustration at work, you can vent on your private soap box. If you have a fight with your significant other, you can talk about it on your private soap box. If you’re frustrated by the beliefs and politics of long time friends and family… private soap box it.

The problem I’ve noticed is that these private soap boxes tend to only really be semi-private. You want the people you’re venting to to sort of know something about you, aside from your ranting. You want them to relate. Otherwise, you’d post anonymously on an unknown blog… but you need an audience to vent and get feedback.

It’s the semi-private nature that tends to break things down. Years ago, it was, for me, talking to pseudo-buddies on proto-community sites. But those message boards, etc, left an easy trail of rants (I was actually threatened with a weak lawsuit because a former employer found me on a forum and saw one post of me bitching about “my boss.”) and inevitably attracted trolls. Then social networks evolved, and I was able to choose who saw what, and only talk to the friends I wanted to. This was better, but inevitably, I’d start adding close friends, and in turn, other people who knew me. As mu network would grow, I’d start to see people trying to squirrel into the friends list. People I’d grown up with, but hadn’t seen in years. Many times, they’d delete our virtual connection over my language (oh for fuck’s sake, people!), or my talk about things that don’t make religious types happy (I’d been raised in an overtly religious manner). Next thing I knew, I’d start getting friend requests from coworkers, old friends and then, the inevitable death knell of the soap box—family members.

I love my family, just like I love my girlfriend, just like I love my job, etc. But I don’t want to say everything to all of them all the time. When I started getting friend requests from immediate family members on Facebook, for example, I knew I had to stop talking about my religious views (many of them are very religious, and I am outspokenly not). I soon learned that I could barely talk about politics without raising the ire of some. Then facebook imploded (for soapboxing… it’s still great for updates and contact management). I got a friend request from my grandma, Flo. Love her… LOVE her. But I don’t want to have her updates full of me swearing, etc.

Thus my soapboxing turned to Twitter. The girlfriend doesn’t “get” twitter (though I read her random tweets all the time). No one in my immediate fam seem to know what it is. The close friends who use it tend to be the types who don’t care what I spout off about. And it’s a lot harder to find random people. BUT… anyone can follow you, without your sign off (unless you go private, which is sadly my next course), and blocking them is fairly noticeable. It’s easy to just ignore a Facebook friend request… they have no idea of your activity levels. But Twitter… they’ll know if they can no longer see anything.

Back to Kevin. Kevin and I work together, and I’m totally cool with him seeing my rants. But, as we discussed, he represents work pushing in to my private soap box. He made the point that to respond to one of my snarky posts put him out in the open, that he’d have to comment via direct messages. And then once your bosses start adding you, you have to tone down work day posts, frequency and snark.

Then I received a following notice for one of my girlfriend’s college friends. Another sign of the expanding circle. And back to Shaq… it’s no longer just tech nerds. Twitter is becoming something ubiquitous. If a giant basketball star (stature and profile) starts using it, soon your family will know. And your grandma.

And your free space will die off. Time to start looking for the next random tech startup for a place to bitch to a selected group of people. I’m already worried about Tumblr…