I joined Facebook quite a while ago, and while I sometimes get frustrated by the quirks of the algorithm, which clogs up my newsfeed with tales of Katie Hopkins and a relentless tide of motivational messages, I think It has a positive influence on my life. But I've held out on Twitter so far.
I think I was put off initially by self-satisfied politicians blurting out the party line in meaningless spurts of micro-verbiage. And I didn't really see what I could post in so few words that would be worthwhile.
Now, in all honesty, I think I'm put off by the mob response that seems to be regularly unleashed by some benighted soul on the site every week or so. Remember that PR woman who got on a plane and made a very ill-advised remark about South Africa and AIDS? When she got off the plane, it had been re-tweeted thousands of times and her job was gone, her life in shreds. I wouldn't want to defend what she said, but we all make silly remarks off-the-cuff. I wouldn't want everything I blurted out in pubs recorded and held against me in perpetuity.
Twitter sometimes unleashes a mass outrage response in people I find frightening, a modern version of the stocks.
But the next part of my course more or less mandates that I set up an account. Well, I did sign up to an MA in Online and Distance Learning. I shuould quit the whinging and get on with it #apprehensive