Life on Tapp: Life stood still last week as I was hanging by a ‘Thread’
Blaise Tapp writes: While it’s not unheard of for me to go missing in action for half an hour so while being preoccupied with keeping up to date with various sporting and news dramas, this time it was different. Like tens of millions of others around the world, I’ve spent recent days attempting to get to grips with the latest social media sensation – Threads, which is the latest offering from Mark Zuckerburg, the man who arguably changed the world forever by launching Facebook nearly two decades ago.
Its introduction was as sudden as it was unexpected, presumably prompted by the well publicised problems at Twitter – the social media platform of choice for world leaders, A-listers and any journalist worth their salt. Despite being much closer to 50 than nine, I was overcome by FOMO – for those of you who still tell visitors to give you three rings when they get home, that means the fear of missing out – and immediately downloaded the app once I heard that it really was a thing.
Despite already cutting it fine for the madness of the school run and not having emptied the kitchen bin, life stood still while I chose the photo I wanted to display on my account as well as writing something pithy for that all important profile. Mrs Tapp was told that the delay was due to me not being able to find any matching socks, which in our house, is highly plausible, although the fib wasn’t believed for one second.
I’ve never been a trendsetter but this time, I’d convinced myself that signing up within the first few hours of its launch was an imperative.
Since then, trips to the shops and the smallest room in the house have become far more frequent, not to mention longer in duration, due to me consuming as much of the shiny new app as possible, without it massively disrupting family life, not to mention my day job.
While it’s early days, I’ve enjoyed Threads so far as it seems much less angry, not to mention less toxic, than its rival – a point which was underlined by the blatant libelling on Twitter of a host of household names as trolls and ghouls engaged in an unsavoury game of guess the anonymous BBC star who first became subject of lurid headlines on Saturday.
While finding a nicer place to engage virtually with both strangers and friends has been refreshing, I’m not yet ready to dump Twitter as many of those who operate in my professional universe have stayed where they are. That’s the trouble with working in the information game – you need to monitor the activities of everybody who matters, across all platforms.
The arrival of Threads has prompted me to reflect on whether I need so many social media apps – at last count I had six of them on my phone which, believe it or not, isn’t as many as it sounds. My conclusion? Probably not, but which ones am I going to give up?
It’s worth pointing out that, despite how it seems, I’m by no means a social media addict – Zuckerburg made his move after Elon Musk’s Twitter introduced a limit which prevented users from reading more than 600 posts a day – I simply don’t have the time to read even a fraction of that. Would I prefer to be spending some of my spare time doing something more healthy than scrolling through a sea of nonsense? Without a doubt.
I remain convinced that if social media hadn’t been invented, the world would be a better place than it is right now. But, sadly, that’s not the reality and it’s here to stay.