Not “careful” enough?

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Forget the AFL Grand Final replay.

Forget the NRL Grand Final (please forget it!)

And forget Gary Ablett’s defection to the Gold Coast Cane Toads.

This is the nation’s biggest breaking news story:

Why I’m quitting Twitter .. Dr Jason Wilson

Yes folks, Australia’s self-proclaimed leading social media expert is running scared reassessing his life options following the outing of Grog’s Gamut and is quitting the medium he has so vigorously promoted and used.

And he’s serious!

So serious that he’s deleted all 26,000+ tweets and written the most important piece The Drum has ever seen.

Don’t bother reading the original – unless you’re sufferring insomnia and need something to send you to sleep - I have done the hard work for you and narrowed the Doc’s real reasons down to these two central paragraphs.

Which still use too many words.

So here it is. Don’t worry that it’s written in gobblygook, I have provided a translation:

I like to think I’ve been fairly careful in my use of Twitter. But recent private and professional changes – the details of which I won’t bore you with – have encouraged to take things more seriously. As a result, I’m inclined to protect the distinction between my professional and private selves a little more carefully anyway. It’s become clear from recent events on Twitter – culminating in Grog’sgate – that Twitter has changed to an extent that I think that the spontaneity it encourages might be bad for me.

Partly, that’s about my use of the service. My first reaction to the Grog’sgate story was disbelief and disgust, which I put out there as soon as it registered. There’s still some of that in my considered response, but it’s my professional role as someone whose research and teaching crosses over with the events of Grog’sgate to lead with considered analysis, not trail with it. Twitter encourages one (or me, at least) to vent immediate replies, which may not match, may even contradict a more disinterested evaluation. I’m not paid or qualified for minute-by-minute commentary, but for analysis and research. My personal opinions are my own, and they’re quite distinct from, and often incompatible with any professional conclusions I might draw. But I need to make that clearer by not issuing professional and personal messages from the same space. Since I’ve ruled out separate accounts, the whole thing needs to come to a halt.

Translation:

1st paragraph:

I haven’t been “careful” enough with what I tweet

2nd paragraph:

I didn’t mean to say those things. I’m an idiot.

He could have said all that on Twitter!

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9 thoughts on “Not “careful” enough?”

  1. I don’t think Twitter is a good forum for expressing immediate reactions, unless done so tentatively. I’d like to think I am a little careful with what I write there, but I think its best not to take it too seriously because of the fact that its only a few words per tweet.

  2. I’ll make the same comment I made to Jason at The Drum:

    Twitter is just another tool of the Internet and, just like blogging, if it’s not used inappropriately or maliciously then there is no way it can come back to bite you. So your decision to delete your entire archive of some 27,000 tweets (wow!) seems to be an admission that you’ve misused it at times. Otherwise why not let it stand?

    That said, I think that in general you have not misused it, although I have noticed a bit of unsolicited and unprovoked sarcasm & snark directed at some people (including at me) but so what?

    Your decision is genuinely mystifying. I can only conclude that you must be contemplating a future career in the profession in which you currently teach (and which you somewhat deride).

    Good luck with that!

    And I’ll just add this: Perhaps Jason should learn how to write more succinctly first!

  4. As you can now see from this link: http://twitter.com/jason_a_w

    This person has protected their tweets.

    (Bio: Lecturing in journalism and communications at University of Canberra. Also dispensing opinion in my own organ. Views expressed here are my own. Have you read my Drum piece? Why are all those commenters so unkind?)

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