LIVE TWEETING #2
So, we’ve been here before, but I’ll give you the brief rundown again; live tweeting is the process of publishing a series of tweets to the platform Twitter to bring instant communication and correspondence to events as they happen (“What Is Live Tweeting and How to Do It Successfully”). It is a completely natural thing we as individuals in the age of technology do often, however, when we are asked to for school then it seems weird. On the contrary but, live tweeting plays a major role in the event experience, and its implication in environments both natural and planned is key to our understanding of the prevailing context. Live tweeting itself successfully accomplishes three things; the first being, it helps the audience prepare for the events beforehand. To prepare our Twittersphere for the multitude of tweets about to hit their screens, we as students in the preparation for a film screening would do almost like a series of ‘intro’ tweets you could say. These included but were certainly not limited to, the title of the film journey we were about embark on, background on the cast, the year of its publication and a short plot summary; and many, including mine, featured an outline of the major themes and ideas the film would explore. Including the initial publication of the class hashtags for the session.
The second successful component of live tweeting accounts to be the value this process adds to the event itself. Whilst trying to write our own tweets and keep up with the several other hundred overloading our phones from our peers, this proved to be an adaptive process. However, in between the madness insights were shared, perspectives were deepened, thoughts were expanded, and theories were drawn up. We went further than just physical language and ventured into images, GIFS, movie posters and thematic scene photos to create an analytical world beyond monotonous discourse. The experience overall, while foreign when expected, furthered my knowledge and understanding significantly with the course content. For instance, my understanding of AI through the subject material evidently aided my analysis of the connection between humanity and progressive technology. In a series of tweets, I commented on the individual experience building to collective when AI became involved, using my base knowledge and applying it to the film scenarios. As a result, I observed it in several mediums such as the function of video games in Ready Player One and the phone ‘Siri’ persona in the movie HER. I Furthered this by stating its incredible the stretch people take in believing this artificial reality created within films and how to easy it is to detach from our own authentic context. However, I was quickly accustomed to a new perspective when a peer connected this theory to the use of Facebook in our society a decade ago, where our reliability on it led to 100 status updates a day talking about what we had eaten for breakfast and who we had spoken too in the last 10 minutes. Crazy I know. In addition, I was made to be aware of the immense negative impact on humanity when we allow technology to consume ourselves and our lives; by being made to indivertibly engage with film content. In Ready Player One users were jeopardising their legitimate assets to further their game development; it was an obvious and eye-opening display of when two very unpredictable components, technology, and obsession, collide. Which, frankly, is not completely an impossible and unheard-of occurrence in real life.
In addition, my understanding of the human race and human function, stems from obviously being one myself, but being able to apply this awareness to contextual situations in film through live tweeting; aided in my understanding of truly the depths and lengths of humanity and its bounds. Arrival was a key example where this furthered understanding of mine was formed due to the commitment of humanity in the film, to new knowledge and information even when faced with unpredictable and unknown danger. Showcasing that curiosity sometimes trumps our survival conscience. Live tweeting forced me to pay attention to genres I wouldn’t normally glance at and subsequently my engagement and understanding of the film significantly improved due to the required analysis along the way. Further to this, it also made the films more interesting in a sense, as many times I was looking and reading below the surface matter to form my opinions and base my knowledge.
Finally, the third aspect of what makes live tweeting so successful is the extent of strengthened engagement after the event. More specifically, the discourse during the film only made the conversations that followed after, to be significantly more intensive and engaging. As we had time to process, reflect and appropriately consider and respond to each other’s points of discussion. We were able to engross ourselves with thought considering each of the frequent outstanding communicative annotations. The subject matter and prescribed content material only furthered this as they formed the basis of my perception with this genre; in particular with AI and the depths human existence in connection with each other. However, with the combination of initial understanding and tangible context my knowledge and awareness of society and our environment only grew exponentially to create a fully-fledged immersive learning experience.
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In conclusion, although some may say live tweeting when expected, is a weird and unnatural action, the insights and understanding it provides is immeasurable, especially when furthering already retained, relevant content. As a final note, the growing tension between the representations of the future and what is likely to be its reality, are expected and only become more obvious when discussed in such open contexts. Ultimately, thriving as we endeavour a quest of patience in discovering the realism of future existence and poses the question; will the future be completely out of this world, or will it be a controlled adaptation of an advanced society we exist in now?
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REFERENCES:
“What Is Live Tweeting and How to Do It Successfully.” PromoRepublic, promorepublic.com/en/blogglossary/what-is-live-tweeting/. Accessed 20 May 2023.