Twitter: Voluntary Panopticon-as-Leisure

It all started with that damn Myron Oygold.

For reasons that I still don’t understand, Mr. Oygold initiated a project that forced several of us to get a Twitter account. Until today, I had not yet created a Twitter account. I had seen it used, and grumbled about it. People kept telling me, “You need to get on Twitter” and I would mutter to myself while they would all whisper about what a crabby old Luddite I was. I accepted this whispering and derision, because I really did not want to get Twitter. But then Myron Oygold started his campaign and once there was guilt in play, I had no choice.

And two hours ago, I created my Twitter account. And now I can fully articulate why it is that I hate the very idea of it.

What annoys me the most is that Twitter is so clearly a Foucaldian-style Panopticon. For those of you who have never read Foucault’s Discipline & Punish, here’s a quick excerpt to describe the Panopticon-style prison:

“He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection” (Discipline & Punish, p. 202)

In other words, this is what Foucault describes as “an uninterrupted play of calculated gazes.” In this prison system, by creating a space where the prisoners know they can be looked at, but cannot see when they are being seen, creates a system of self-reporting and good-behavior-through-fear. Further, Foucault describes that we are increasingly in a “carcereal” society–a society which is constantly in this prison-like format.

Fine. So now you are thinking, “I’ve heard this all before!” People have been talking about new media-as-panopticon since the birth of the blog. You are wondering how Twitter makes this any different at all. After all, many people put similar updates on Facebook. But Twitter feels different to me.

It’s the snippets of phrases, the constant and meaningless updates that make this even more useless. Twitter makes self-reporting fun. It makes it an act of pure leisure, in its simplicity. Not everyone wants to take the time to write a full blog, but who doesn’t want to tell everyone they know, “At the supermarket. Price of Velveta up $.30. Enraged.” This constant self-reporting continues to normalize the trend. No longer do you have to bother being in front of a computer to tell everyone you know that you just ate a rotten peanut. Now we have added immediacy into the mix, and self-reporting can become more constant, and more socially acceptable.

Here’s what I fear. I am dreading the day when eventually someone uses Twitter as a legal alibi. (“But, your honor, I was clearly having lunch with my pyscho Ex when the murder happened!”) Scratch that. I fear the inevitable episode of Law & Order when a fictional character uses Twitter as an alibi. (Dear Dick Wolf: When you use this plot point, please email me for info on where to send royalties. Thanks!)

Twitter does not make any major changes to the inevitable trend of voluntary (and leisured) self-reporting, but it does make it a more constant act. Twitter does not change things dramatically. But how can we even pretend to care about privacy acts and phone tapping, when we are constantly reporting our every movement to the world?

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