Given that we live in an age when everyone and their nan has
a Twitter, probably the most shocking thing you’ll discover in this article is
that Keira Knightley didn’t have a Twitter at all until recently. Even more
recently, she’s gone back a step and gotten rid of it. She lasted an entire 12
hours, which is as many hours as some celebs spend on it per day.
I have no idea what it is about Twitter that gets people
going so crazy, but for some reason they’ll spend hours and hours on it,
telling the world of their banal existence, or otherwise hurling abuse at
people they’d without it have no hope of insulting. It’s caused a whole heap of
controversies; whether it’s abusive comments from unknowns, or pseudo-celebrities
putting a twisted stamp on current events just to get people talking about
them.
It’s a generally held opinion that Twitter is pointless. It’s
used to distribute largely uninteresting, pointless information, or to bicker
childishly in front of numerous strangers. However it is used by a majority of
those in the public eye. Keira Knightley decided to see what it was all about
recently, and decided very shortly afterwards that the reputation Twitter has
gained is entirely appropriate and that she’d rather go back to not publicising
her entire life.
“It made me feel a bit like being in a school playground” is
how she put it, and doesn’t that really just sum up Twitter entirely? You’ve
got the kids slinging insults back and forth; all the trivial details kids like
to pretend are interesting conversation; the couple of kids who like to go
around showing off about their latest achievement; the kids who don’t really
understand how the whole being in public thing works; and the tastemakers
telling everyone else what to talk about. If Twitter ever needed a tagline,
Keira’s nailed it really.
Words by Ari Carrington
