I have just read - with a certain amount of stomach churning horror - a Guardian Comment is Free article demanding that Twitter feeds be delayed so that "someone" can ensure they abide by the law. This would obviously have the effect of killing this form of social media stone dead - the resources do not exist to check tweets with the speed needed to keep the Twitter format fresh and interesting, and even if it was virtually instantaneous you would still miss that sense of anarchy, or someone-could-say-anything that makes it challenging and fascinating. Watching successful, allegedly intelligent people get themselves into trouble for publishing photos of themselves driving in the fast lane or criticising their superiors is a game of schadenfraude even better than watching George Osborne announcing growth figures. But on a worthier note, Twitter's contribution to spreading revolutionary fervour around Egypt, Tunisa and Libya *can* be overplayed, but certainly shouldn't be ignored. Twitter is a mass voice, a crowd-sourced social thermometer, and even if it gives you contradictory readings half the time its still an unrivalled indicator of mob intellect that breaks the shackles of the no-debate sterile media in this country, not to mention the timid politicians that claim to run it.
But enough evangelism. Back to footballers shagging.
I have a smidge of sympathy for Ryan Giggs - not because he hasn't been a shit to two women, but because of plenty of men (and women) have been this much of a shit and no-one cares two hoots - but in the end, the only people who actually matter in the whole scenario are those directly involved. Imogen Thomas clearly noticed that he was shagging her. I assume the inordinate amount of time and money that went into procuring the superinjunction tipped off Mrs Giggs, even if her husband's honesty didn't. The important people knew. Does it really matter who else is talking about it?
Clearly it does if Giggs wants to profit from his image as a faithful family man. But obviously there's a further moral quandary in allowing him to do that if he isn't one. But as a footballer, it means fuck all. He just joins a club most of his shallow fucked up colleagues have already signed up to.
So I'm forced to ask, in the great "free speech v privacy debate", what gives this multi-millionaire shagger the right to fuck not just a busty TV nobody, but also my right to reasonable self-expression? Not my ability to name shaggers - I really don't care - but any attempt to protect them also protects people that don't need protecting. The slippery slope easily becomes a water slide.
Secondly, and this is where my thoughts get really experimental, if gossip was all over the free Twitter services all the time, people wouldn't get their gossip from newspapers. Tabloids couldn't boost sales by including stories that people had already swapped amongst themselves. They would stop paying journalists to find this stuff out. Consequently although everyone on Twitter would be talking about everything that had been discovered, fewer things would actually be discovered in the first place.
It's just a thought. And possibly as convincing as coalition economic policy, which I note Barack Obama has declined to support.
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