THIS USER DOES NOT EXIST: Confessions of a Twitter Addict who Deactivated Twitter

Hi. My name’s @littlemisswilde and I’m completely addicted to social media.* Social media addiction is starting to become recognized as a legitimate thing, and I’ll happily start attending group recovery when that becomes commonplace. But most people wouldn’t even realise that they have a problem. Being completely obsessed with my own behaviour, I did. So back in April, when I had a dissertation to finish, I deactivated all of my social networks and deleted all of the accompanying apps (this includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and DrawSomething**) for 4 days. And, as expected, I didn’t cope very well.

I don’t have any inbuilt self control and the replacement provided by Mac only comes in 24 hours doses and isn’t available on iPhone yet, so such a dramatic step really was the only way I could get those 8000 words in on time. This is a timeline of the symptoms I experienced for what was genuinely the most traumatic 72(ish) hour period of my life, which is essentially a storify of the #IRL Twitter feed I was keeping in the back of my dissertation notebook. Yes, really.

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A little bit about Youth Unemployment


So filming has started for the new series of Channel 4’s Battlefront and this time round there’s only one campaign – the fight against youth unemployment. I wrote a blog post to introduce what it’s all about. It’s a pretty non-contentious issue at this stage (essentially we have no future) but have a read anyway.

http://battlefront.channel4.com/campaign/guest-blogger

There are also some nicely airbrushed photos of me and they call me a ‘social media queen’ in the introduction which always brightens my day, obviously.

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Social Media and the London Olympics

This isn’t an analysis of the relationship between The Internet and The Games, just an opportunity to share some comedy gold I’ve stumbled across that links London 2012 and various social networks. You know, in case people want to take time out from slapping down Boris and observing how crowded the city is on Facebook and Twitter.

First up, the lowdown on the digital strategy* for the Games from BBC2’s Twenty Twelve (from a brand manager who is actually scarily similar to me. Excluding the attachment to MySpace. Ok including the attachment to MySpace. Whatever):

And secondly, someone from the Daily Mail dwelling on Twitter and the Games here.

NB: Only one of these is actually supposed to be funny.

ENJOY! And happy #London2012 everyone!

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Why LOL Shouldn’t have had a straight-to-DVD release

NB: This post isn’t actually about the Miley Cyrus film, it’s actually about films in general and how they forget about the Internet. Until now. Sort of.

Okay so it wasn’t exactly straight-to-DVD, but the Lionsgate website said it was only showing in ‘select theatres’ which translated to about 8 cinemas showing it last week, mainly at 11:40am in obscure parts of London with no advertising at all, except Miley’s casual engagement announcement. Unsurprisingly then, the cinema was half-empty and every single person in there was a Miley fangirl/boy, myself included. Which may prompt you to think that this review (it’s not really a review) will be incredibly biased. But I was so prepared for this film to be awful* and it just wasn’t. LOL is, without a doubt, the best teenage coming of age rom-com I’ve seen in a really, really long time.

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Life Offline

Just a quick note, on the off chance that anyone is looking for me in cyberspace: I’ve deactivated my social media profiles so that I can get some work done. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Draw Something were proving too distracting, but I’ll be back soon to update you excessively on what I’m doing, or more likely what I’m not doing.

I know we joke (with undertones of complete sincerity) about my addiction to and reliance on social media that goes far beyond that of your average 21 year old in this generation, and I probably should seek help for that at some stage, but this is just a temporary measure.

The first 24 hours have been emotional to say the least, so expect a full post on withdrawal in the life of a social media addict as soon as I’ve finished this degree. I’ve been livetweeting it all in a notebook, with a pen.

Hope the Internet’s treating you well.

P.S. My Google+ profile is still active and no amount of longing to network has made me start trying to use it just yet.

EDIT – I just saw the empty sidebar of my blog where my tweets would be and the error message made me sob. That would have been a tweet.

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Why I’m deleting half of my Facebook friends before 2012

“Facebook is a social utility that allows you to procrastinate by scrolling through a constantly updating stream of photos of pasta, cryptic updates and endless event invites from people you met once three years ago and haven’t spoken to since.”

I have 816 friends on Facebook. 816 friends? Real friends, defined in the OED as: ‘One joined to another in mutual benevolence and intimacy’? No Jessica, even you, life and soul of every party, ultra-social being and all round great girl, cannot claim to have 816 friends.

facebookold

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Oh! Sweet Nothing

So here I am again, having casually not posted anything for quite a while. This time I haven’t come with promises that I will soon privilege you with my inner dwellings in longer than 140 character bursts. I’ve come to terms with the fact that anyone who actually looks at this site follows me on Twitter so knows more than enough about what I’m doing on a daily basis, so let’s just say I’m an exceptionally dedicated micro-blogger and leave it at that.

This post then serves as a round-up of my current activities, probably more for my benefit than anyone else.

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Thoughts on the MTV VMA coverage (and a little bit about the future of TV)

This is my response to the coverage of the MTV VMAs 2011, and the news that Beyonce & Jay Z are expecting their first child.

On the year that MTV’s Video Music Awards celebrated record viewing figures, Twitter’s PR account announced that they’d received a record number of tweets after Beyonce’s mid-VMA confirmation that she is, in fact, with child. Despite the probable musical demigod status of said child, this record bump (no pun intended) of 8,868 tweets per second was more down to MTV’s juggernaut-inspired social media strategy for this year’s ceremony than a genuine collective outpouring of joy for Mr & Mrs Z, or the belief that this is the most worthwhile thing to talk about since March 2006.

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Digital Footprint Summit: Learnings and Insights from the Screenagers

I’m going to be speaking about online privacy and data at Digital Footprint Summit: Learnings and Insights from the Screenagers. The event takes place at the Innovation Warehouse on November 3rd, organised by Tony Fish and including panels made of industry and fellow members of the so-called Facebook Generation. Click here, buy a ticket and get involved.

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The Real Social Network – A Personal Appeal

Hello all,

Just a quick post here to say that we have only hours left to raise money for the production fund for the film about UCL Occupation and the student movement. If you haven’t seen any sneak peeks yet then I recommend this trailer, because we are all so hilarious.

I know I’ve spammed the hell out of you from both Twitter accounts to try and get you to donate but 140 characters isn’t really enough for me to tell you why I think you should.

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Worst Blogger Ever

I know I keep promising glorious posts which I also know you are all sleeplessly waiting for, but the situation happens to be that since the last occupation at UCL of the registry, and the arbitrary victimisation of the UCL 13 (of which I am one, oh the joys of over-sharing on Twitter) I’ve just tried (and failed, I hasten to add) to get some actual, English Literature-related work done, just in time for The ‘E’ Word.

Whilst I’ve been perfecting the fine art of intense procrastination I’ve been suffering from that oh-too-familiar guilt and instead of reading or writing anything that can even be described as ‘useful’ (other than an unhealthy amount of tweets, which I will stand alone in classifying as entirely ‘useful’) I have found myself three seasons into a Sex And The City marathon and a regular on the threshold of the library.

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Things I’m doing/have done

Hello lovely people!

Right this whole blog thing can be quite fun so I’m going to get into it. Here’s a little update on what to expect from me soon.

Events I’m involved in

I’m speaking at this event after the March 26th march. There are still a few standing tickets left if you’d like to indulge in me chatting away, or alternatively if you’d like to laugh for an extended period of time at the hands of Josie Long’s wit, or perhaps if you’d like to listen to the rhythmic spoken words of Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip. If you do come along then make sure you say hi!

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Netroots UK – The Aftermath

In true Little Miss Wilde style I’ve added all of the Netroots UK coverage that I like that includes me in some way to my ‘Media’ page so go and have a look at the blog posts as well as the news stories. If you do only look at one thing, I recommend that it’s this video, made by Michael Chanan, because of the interesting ‘behind the scenes of behind the scenes’ slant. And because I just don’t appear to shut up in it!

(I will, I hope, at some stage, understand the relationship between suitable blog content and things that may bore people, rather than simply staying in some uncertain limbo.)

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Netroots UK – My first speech!

Today I spoke at Netroots UK at the Congress Centre in Bloomsbury.

The most basic description of the day is that it involved lots of left-wing people discussing the internet as a political tool. You can read more about it on their website.

The workshop I spoke in was called ‘Turning online activity into offline activity‘. I spoke about the unexpected and somewhat unorthodox way in which I ran the @ucloccupation Twitter account, with my main point apparently being ‘you can never tweet too much’ and about Twitter as an expansion of the room, and then answered questions relating to the momentum and political grounding of the UCL occupation as well as the student movement in general.

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