Longneck
May 2013
New kid on the block
The new Pope tweeted me the other day. I felt the Breath of God, once removed, arcing across known and unknown worlds, blowing in my ear, comforting me, propping me up, delivering me from evil. I fancy that my feet lifted off the ground, just for an instant. I certainly raised my eyebrows.
In truth, I was more of a bemused bystander. What His Holiness actually did was tweet his millions of ‘followers’ (in a rare apt use of that creepy twitter term), and the more ardent of them set to work re-tweeting his message. So far, this particular missive has inspired 7989 re-tweets … and counting … in English alone. That hardly matches Justin Bieber’s numbers – a recent observation by The Bieb that read ‘love music’ has, last time I checked, been re-tweeted 116,273 times. Still, it’s not bad for an old bloke. Or for the new kid on the block.
‘My thoughts turn to all who are unemployed, often as a result of a self-centred mindset bent on profit at any cost,’ he tweeted. What a work of genius, using just 115 characters (including spaces). Sure, it’s preachy, but that’s something Popes can generally get away with. It’s a provocatively political cry on behalf of the downtrodden – just like Jesus – but it’s vague enough to allow all sorts of possibilities as to who owns the self-centred mindset: multinationals, politicians, the UN Security Council, bosses, unions, the Salvos, all varieties of heathens, the unemployed themselves?
Even the phrasing – ‘my thoughts turn to’ – has a lovely lilt. After the tourists shuffle out of the Sistine Chapel, off to scour Rome for authentic pizza Margherita, I imagine Francis kicking back, sipping a Peroni, staring at the ceiling and murmuring to himself ‘My thoughts turn to the Essendon peptide scandal, despite the God-given onfield artistry and courage of James Hird, champion footballer and bloke.’ (135 characters).
Twitter creates the illusion – occasionally the reality – of direct connections. Having taken Pope Francis’s tweet as a message that he’d dreamed up for me and only me, I was tempted to reply. Twitter, after all, is supposed to be a conversation. But there turned out to be no point because other people – so many other people – had gotten in first.
And what a magnificent sight it was, this heaving groaning salivating mass of humanity: so much ranting and so little listening, so many crashing waves and so little ocean. It was ugly. It was beautiful. It was banal then dynamic then banal. It was petulant. It was tangential. It was faux-offensive and try-hard gratuitous. Most of the time it was beside the point but occasionally it was surprising. Once or twice, it bordered on profound.
That’s why I’m now following Pope Francis: not for the actual content of his tweets but so that I can keep track of the arguments, the faithfulness, the mixed messages and, yes, the abuse that his tweets provoke. Twitter has many moods. Sometimes it’s a love-in. Sometimes it’s deep. Sometimes it’s a painful reminder that the 21st century is about collecting words but rarely reading them. And at its best and worst, twitter generates an extreme volume of viciousness, in defiance of Jesus’s grand tweet: ‘do to others what you would have them do to you’ (Matthew 7:12, 47 characters).
I hope that the Pope reads every single reply to his tweets. I hope that he contemplates what they tell him about humankind. I hope he prints out the most memorable ones and sticks them to his fridge. What I’d love most is for him to reply to the replies: bestowing individual electronic blessings upon his supporters, engaging in jovial banter with his less aggressive detractors, and making a show of blocking (but forgiving) the worst of the worst. But right now, his twitter feed is a sort of ‘thought for the day’ plus avatar, the equivalent of dropping leaflets from a plane and then getting the hell out of there. Sure, it’s fun for the rest of us to put our spin on his spin, but it’d be thrilling if he hung out with us. And told us the errors of our ways.
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