Has Twitter Made You A Better Person?

That's a fairly simple question. Has twitter changed you? And, if so, how? Has it improved your life? But, most importantly, has it improved you?

While people on the outside may scoff, most people who have twittered for more than a few months have made friends on twitter. Many of them are the casual acquaintance type friends, but some are deeper. There is good reason for that. Twitter relationships are inherently based upon respect and admiration, which is a pretty healthy basis for friendship. More important this is the kind of friendship that encourages personal growth.

How does this happen and why? Well, if one looks at how one interacts on twitter it becomes clear. How does one start interacting with another twitter user? It usually begins with something one of the users tweets: an opinion, a news item, a quote, a joke. That strikes a chord, sometimes dissonant, and prompts a follow-up tweet by the other tweeter. If the two are in agreement, then the relationship tends to develop and they get in the habit of retweeting (RTg) each others tweets. And there you have it, you RT a person, because you like what they say and how they say it. That's a relationship built on respect and admiration.

There's another interesting side-effect to this. If you are developing friendships with people you respect, you are emphasizing those own qualities in your life. You are naturally causing yourself to grow to be more the kind of person you respect. Moreover, as you interact more with those you respect, they are even liable to bring out latent tendencies within you that respect your loftier ambitions.

To make this concrete, let me illustrate with a way that my new found friends on twitter have brought positive changes in my own character.

When starting on twitter under a year ago, my anticipation was that I would find links to interesting computer ideas and facts with references to projects in compilers and security that might contain interesting ideas, just as surfing Google and comp.compilers had done for years before. My expectation was that I would also find lots of neophytes who needed help to aid with my experience.

And while I found some of that, what was really on twitter was something different. Yes, there are people on twitter discussing technical matters and using twitter as a tool for learning has not been difficult. However, much of the conversation on twitter has been at a different level, a more human level, a more compassionate and caring level. The surprising thing on twitter was the level of advocacy.

The change in behavior was gradual. At first my tweets were about where to find vulnerability databases and similar dry matters. However, that led to tweeting about potential threats, which led to tweeting about how to protect oneself. And suddenly, et viola, I had started to become an advocate, advising people to take caution, to watch for phishing threats, to change their passwords regularly, and to protect their children. It wasn't a big jump from there to be discussing online privacy, sexting, cyberbullying, and other things which were security related but not within my narrow technical scope.

All of this process was encouraged by those I met on twitter. At first the people were ones who lead me out of simply technical matters to the general threat landscape. However, from there I encountered real advocates. Ones not arguing just for better technical solutions, but for people to actually change their behaviors. To be more cautious, more aware, more responsible, more involved in their children's lives. This widening circle of friends has taken me out of my narrow comfort zone and given me more perspective. (There is a famous quote in German about viewpoints, saying that some people take a circle of radius zero and call it their horizon. My friends on twitter have forced me to widen that radius to encompass more.)

Now, obviously in this process, I hope I haven't gone too far. Intel has prohibitions about us ambassadors (yes, that's what they call us) tweeting about controversial politics and religion. Those generally sit fine with me as I am not comfortable discussing such topics openly anyway. Plus, I would rather not have to decide what is controversial and so general avoidance of politics and religion is a simpler rule. Not that I avoid all references. I certainly won't avoid a quote by a religious or political figure if I like the message.

Still, in general, you will find my tweets to be mostly about things you (as an individual) can do. ways you can make positive changes, rather than changes in the legal or social system. I will pass on information from people who do want to make such changes, but that is for your awareness, to enable you to decide whether you want to support the change or not.

So, how has twitter made me a better person? It has brought out a latent side for encouraging people to "do the right thing". Hopefully, without making me a partisan, taking only a one-sided view. A certain level of advocacy feels good. It does make me feel like a better person. And, I owe this to the friends I have met on twitter. This happened thanks to them. Thanks to you.