Who is Holly Fisher?

V

I was on Twitter today, and discovered that even after four months, #Ferguson has started trending again, because of the #HandsUpWalkout civil disobedience protests. Scrolling through the tweets, I happened upon some very controversial tweets by @HollyRFisher (her Twitter bio, as of 2/11/14, reads: “Christian. Mom. Writer. 100% pro-life…”, which should give enough of an insight such that one can determine she holds a distinctly conservative political stance). The inclusion of #TCOT in this Twitter bio led me to investigate, in more depth, what the ‘Top Conversatives on Twitter’ hashtag meant, how it began as a legitimate campaigning element of US conservatives, and how it has now been appropriated and satired by the internet.

This appropriation led me to the question: Are young people (as the predominant perpetrators of this internet satire—but make no mistake that I’m generalising here) inherently more “liberal” than their older counterparts? (And by liberal, I mean left-wing, rather than how the term is used in reference to the Liberal Party in Australia.) And by “young people”, I don’t just mean the young people of now, but of any generation one cares to pick.

I do think that it’s quite safe to presuppose that the beliefs and ideologies deemed “liberal” by a society, after a time, become conservative. Not because the core concepts behind the ideas have changed, but because surrounding value systems change. In ten, or twenty, or fifty years time, I wonder whether the current Generation Y will still hold the beliefs we do (which will have come to be labelled conservative), or whether we will be in support of a newly determined threshold of “liberal”.

Bringing it back to the issue of Holly Fisher, I guess I bring this issue up because I do strongly disagree with many of her opinions, comments and sentiments. (So much for my desire for my work to be apolitical. But more on that later.). What I am trying to determine within myself is how much of that outrage and indignation can be attributed to my current position as a “young person” and subsequent perpetuator of liberal values? Being a “young person” right now, I’m the first to admit that I’m not really in the best position to objectively determine this. But, at the same time, I hope that I do actively try not to let my personal biases colour my judgements too much.

Like I mentioned before, interestingly enough, I never intended for this project of mine to become political. In fact, I wanted it to remain distinctly apolitical; I thought that asserting particular political opinions would take away from the original goals of this project, as well as have the potential to alienate and/or polarise my audience (not ideal, when I want my audience to be potential employers). I said that I wouldn’t tweet or RT anything to do with #Ferguson, or about similarly controversial, politically-charged topics (absolutely nothing wrong with doing so—this just wasn’t the personal agenda of my Twitter account or blog).

This movement away from pure apoliticism actually began when I retweeted a tweet by Twitter Australia about the 2014 Victorian State election (to be fair, the article it linked to mostly focused on the use of Twitter during the election, rather than the advocating of a particular political view). Later on, I tweeted about feminism and used the #HeforShe (which began trending again, to a minor degree, when Harry Styles whispered it in Em Watson’s ear while presenting her with an award for her gender equality foundation He For She at the British Fashion Awards), and realised that I didn’t think I would be able to remain purely apolitical. (When the second descriptor in your Twitter bio reads ‘feminist’, you begin to question why you were ever doubtful about asserting politically-charged opinions).

And now, to bring it back to why I started writing this blog post to begin with:

This is why I use Twitter. This is just one example of how I use it to alternatively feed and glut my curiosity about the world around me—to cultivate informed opinions on world issues as they happen.

When one is procrastinating by clicking on random links, which link to other links, which link to still more links, why not harness that idle past-time to constructive advantage? In addition to contributing to my own personal journey towards self-improvement, it strengthens the arsenal I have at my disposal as a marketer as well. By knowing more about topics trending on Twitter and the clout of online social media users (whether that be spelled lower-case ‘c’ or with a capitalised ‘K’, I increase the competitive advantage I have in my chosen industry.