Why am I breaking out in doggerel on Threads?
When Twitter was young, then too there must have been the sense of a brave new world
I’ve no idea why but I’ve posted doggerel on Threads three days running.
Here was the first:
Hey Threaders
Bring the world your yarns
Braided, tied with a bow
Braided, bow-tied, or not
The cord of connection
Threads through our lives
Then the second:
Threads’ first Saturday
Does the world’s great age begin anew
Or must hate (and the deathscroll) return?
And here’s the third:
An app’s first Sabbath
doesn’t mean
It is anything other than of
the six days’ world.
How long does it take to make the woods, the poet asked
And answered: As long as it takes to make the world.
The woods is present as the world is.
Social media too,
The world with finger pressed hard on the playback speed button
I’d be the first to accept none of the above is especially poetic — they lack the pipes and timbrels of a Keatsian ode or the unadorned metrical refinement of a Robert Frost stanza — but surely neither is Threads?
The new social media platform launched by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not particularly aesthetic, nor does it lend itself to great reflectiveness or elevated thoughts.
So why did I break out in doggerel on Threads? Two reasons, in my view, and they have little to do with the actual channel itself and more to do with its youth (it was born on Thursday, July 6) and current state of relative technical incoherence.
Threads does not currently give you a feed that comprises people you follow, which allows you to flail around addressing any and every subject, in any way you want. It spells liberation — from expectations — as well as a slightly panicky sense of shouting into space (where sound waves cannot travel).
With Threads being so new, it doesn’t yet have many rules and regulations and reflects a powerful flaring hope among many for friendliness in social media discourse. There, it feels like I came over faintly poetic again, but once upon a time, when Twitter was young, there must have been the same sense of a brave new world.
Originally published at: https://www.rashmee.com/2023/07/09/why-am-i-breaking-out-in-doggerel-on-threads/
