Who Do You Follow?

Do you tweet? Are you one of the “twitterati”? I’m fairly au fait with technology… I blog and I’m known to frequent a certain social networking site, but I haven’t yet entered the weird and wonderful world of twitter. But if you are a twit or a twitterer or whatever the appropriate term is, who do you follow? And why? Many people follow stars... not celestial bodies as the Magi did, but celebrities (although tabloids would be happy to tell us that many of those celebrities have "celestial bodies"!) But last week the results of a poll were published by Prospect magazine revealing which figure from history would be most likely followed, had technology permitted…

The result was that Sir Winston Churchill came top, followed by Jesus and then Darwin. David Goodhart, the editor of the magazine suggests: “Churchill and Jesus both specialised in brief, memorable phrases — so both ‘we will fight them on the beaches’ and ‘blessed are the meek’ are messages perfect for the Twitter generation. Jesus was obviously born to tweet.”

There’s a thought to conjure with as we prepare to remember Jesus’ birth. He may not have been born to tweet… But he did call on others to follow him… And when he said follow, he wasn’t just suggesting that we should be passive spectators, keeping up with his catchy one-liners, and filing them away to quote over the dinner table later… But that we should put his words into action... Following his example in putting flesh and blood and bone on the eternal word of God.

So who do you follow? Not on twitter, but really follow in the real world?

(This was adapted from a piece written for the Just a Moment slot broadcast on Downtown Radio yesterday. I must say, whilst Jesus and Churchill fill David Goodhart's theory re memorable phrases, Darwin was not one for snappy one-liners. As one who has read and studied, and enjoyed, his books, there aren't too many sentences that would transfer easily to blog form, never mind twitter... I think that this is much more of a pose than a really thought through response... a function of Darwin's deservedly raised profile at present and, I fear, the middle-class, "intellectual (?)" constituency that is currently prevalent on twitter.)

Cheers