On the Many Dangers of Twitter

…in the light of Shashi Tharoor and Lalit Modi foolishly tweeting their way to a tragic fall.

One day late at night in February this year, Barkha Dutt suggested to Shah Rukh Khan that perhaps he would consider making her an item girl in his next movie. Shah Rukh agreed and developed the idea. He told her she could be a ‘news item girl’. Then and there he also wrote down the lyrics of the song—‘u r mine..u r mine…i give good head…line’. He asked her whether she approved. Barkha called him wicked, but did so in a friendly sort of way.

It’s a mildly scandalous exchange. Luckily, there is the fact that the conversation happened in front of 400,000 people. That’s the number of followers Barkha and Shah Rukh put together have on Twitter, where it occurred.  However, let us ask why both parties would engage in such a dialogue. If this had been an interview or a talk show with Barkha, would Shah Rukh have talked about ‘giving head’? You bet not. Would he have done so if he got a moment alone with her during a cocktail party? No, in all likelihood.  So, what is it about Twitter that makes reasonable people do things they wouldn’t do in public, or even in private?

One possible explanation is that Twitter is both impersonal and personal at the same time. Your family, friends and strangers are all mixing and matching in the same pool. Also, unlike Facebook, where information about you is circulated only to those you choose, with Twitter, anyone who chooses to follow you is the audience. But it is hard to make that distinction when both involve typing on the same keyboard. Take the case of Anand Mahindra. Sensible people don’t give their numbers to strangers. But the managing director of the Mahindra Group announced his niece’s number on Twitter until it was pointed out and deleted.

Twitter can be a dangerous horse to hitch on to, as both Shashi Tharoor and Lalit Modi are finding out. It fuels megalomania because there are all these thousands of loyal followers waiting for 140 character sermons. It also leaves no room to backtrack. In India, the stock line to salvage a crisis has been “I was misquoted”.  But this was not an option open to Modi after he tweeted the name of Sunanda Pushkar. Once it comes from an authentic Twitter account, you can’t say “I misquoted me”.

Lalit ModiShashi TharoorTwitter