Twitter gives you a sort of window through which you can scream all day at the world saying whatever you want, and with time, screaming turns into a compulsion. The compulsion of screaming and the pressure to say something original, witty, funny and daring all the time gets some people to cross certain lines to fit in or appeal more to the audience. I've had a Twitter account since 2010 that I hardly ever used. I've hated it because every time I logged into it, it literally made me fear people! Public figures and random people I knew in real life and respected where completely different on Twitter regarding thoughts, opinions on different events and even the sort of language they use. It was like they transformed on Twitter into talkative, ill mannered people so unlike the people I liked and respected from real life. Many of the accounts I came across with very high number of followers and high rates of getting re-tweeted, had nothing to say all day but a series of word play tweets which seemed witty but had no actual meaning or use at all except trying to impress the world by how cool, tough or daringly arrogantly confident they are. The rates by which the owners of these accounts tweet tells you that their faces and fingers are stuck to their phones or computer screens all day, which makes you wonder if they are living out their awesomeness only virtually, contradicting any possibility of time to get a real "that awesome" life at all.
So my final impression of Twitter was it being a thing that gets people to say too much until they start saying things they probably shouldn't be saying and get used to seeing nothing wrong with it. Or gets them to say too much until the "real them" appeared, and I disliked the real them enough to make me not want to know about it.
Then it was exams time! It's common knowledge how any thing can seem adorable during exam times and Twitter is definitely not the worse thing on the list. So as it was my duty to study, it became equally my duty to give Twitter another shot!! This time I came across a few very interesting accounts, and browsing through the accounts they followed I came across more and more interesting ones. I got to find amazing talented inspiring dedicated people who I never imagined could exist that abundantly at all. Respectable people from a diversity of political views with striking reasonableness and tolerance without a trace of extremism or blinding enthusiasm. People committed to social causes. People of culture and knowledge. Religious people who take da'wa to Islam to a whole different level of commitment, originality and still keep it funny and interesting all the time. I've learnt a lot from them all specially the last group, including recent followers of Islam who impressed as well as pained me with how they had a lot better knowledge and understanding of Islam along with a sincere degree of attachment to its ideas and obligations that many of us born as Muslims sadly don't have.
It was inspiring and refreshing to get to meet these people even if only virtually, and I've tried to keep my Twitter timeline mostly composed of them so that may be it would become a little daily reminder of how much one could still find space for self improvement on both spiritual, intellectual and achievements level.
I am not saying that having fun on a social network is wrong. I am saying that time spent on social networks, specially if you spend so much of it, is not time outside of real life but time cut off real life. And words said still count as words held against you or for you. And it's always up to us how we choose to spend this time and these words. So if you're spending your whole day reading nonsense people say or talking to people about nonsense, then may be you might want to consider squeezing in some meaningfulness.
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