Posting Links On Twitter

One of the things that makes Twitter so vibrant is that it is a very quick and very sure way of spreading information, and if you find a link on the Internet that you want to bring to people’s attention, it is necessary only to tweet that link and sit back as people open and read it, and forward it to others who would be interested. The history of the viral link, although chronologically short, has already got a lot of stories to it, and many of these have been provided by Twitter.

One of the most frequent uses for linking on Twitter is when someone says or does something so incredibly idiotic that it sends the average reader into either a furious rage or gales of laughter. By the medium of Twitter it is possible to pass on a link to this story and share in the derision. It is also possible to bring serious lapses of political, journalistic or moral standards to wider attention.

One of the results of this practice is that the targets of such treatment often respond to the large-scale anger directed at them by insisting that they are the victims of an “orchestrated internet hate campaign”. This misses the point, and is untrue. People pass on the story because they find it distasteful or ridiculous, and it is this that drives the story on, rather than a specific hatred for the person in question. In this cynical world it is not that easy to fabricate outrage, but genuine outrage has a momentum all of its own.