If you’re on Twitter, you probably tweet too much. Or not at all. That’s not just because Elon Musk fired most of the company’s employees and now the site limps on, like a vacuum pack sandwich on the last flight home. But because that’s how it’s always been.
Data from the Pew Research Centre finds that the median Twitter user posts twice a month. Consequently, if you tweet even a couple of times a week you are, statistically speaking, deeply weird.
Partly this relates to the 90-9-1 principle that governs many online communities. This rule dictates that roughly 90 per cent of users lurk, nine per cent contribute somewhat and the top one per cent account for large swathes of all interactions or, in the Twitterverse, the discourse.
This sort of thing happens all the time in the real world too. And it can quickly lead to some disconcerting conclusions. That by taking an interest in something, even a small one, you are instantly categorising yourself as unusual.
People who enjoy niche pursuits implicitly understand this, often because they’ve been told as much from a young age. I promise you, those who like to spend a summer’s day bookbinding, practising taxidermy or, dare I say, rewatching vintage Roger Federer matches, know they are different.
But things start to get dicey when this unwelcome realisation is passed onto people who self-identify as mainstream, who put the normal in normal distribution. Think of it this way: according to the author and former adman Ian Leslie, the typical Coca-Cola consumer is not someone who drinks the product daily or even as an occasional treat. It’s the person who has bought it once in the last year. Put another way, if you don’t drink Coke, you are the typical consumer.
Or perhaps you are one of the millions of people who enjoy Beyonce’s music. Pretty standard, right? But if you attend even one of her concerts, let alone two or three, you are a bit of a superfan, whether you want to be or not.
It’s understandable that people may want to push back against this conclusion — being a weirdo takes some getting used to. But I think it’s a good thing. If we can recognise and embrace our own foibles, perhaps we could extend that courtesy to others.
It’s tempting to think we all want the same things in life. But the further we ascend Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, away from the physiological necessities and towards self-actualisation, the more our paths diverge and we are empowered to open doors others might choose to walk past.
I find it reassuring. If you take the time and make the effort to enjoy almost anything, even the most conventional event imaginable, packed with thousands of other people, you are at a stroke standing out from the crowd.
Own it. Drink Coke as if there’s no six-month waiting list for an NHS dentist and tweet like your employer can’t find the workers to replace you.
Absurdity of The Rehearsal
Flying home from Sydney (a city I recently wrote about in these pages and the internet decided I hated, despite the many nice things I said about it), I blitzed through HBO’s The Rehearsal, starring Nathan Fielder.
The premise is almost too absurd to describe. Fielder assists ordinary people in rehearsing apparently challenging conversations they want to have or difficult life choices they need to make. He seeks to achieve this through using elaborate (read: expensive) sets and hired actors.
I spent the first half of the opening episode confused and furious with the seat in front for reclining during meal service. How could something with such a small viewership be made at this scale?
But somewhere over the Indian Ocean I got hooked and remembered the US has a GDP per capita 50 per cent greater than the UK, and a small part of that is spent on HBO subscriptions.
