Twitter’s been a great way for me to link with people who want more feature films that women write & direct. To know about what we/they are doing, to point me in useful directions. And without Twitter I may never have known about women filmmakers making the ‘webseries’ choice. I find it more useful than FB as an activist tool, because of its brief msgs, I think.

In terms of political activism, I think I see Twitter as a ‘gateway drug’ so to speak. Maybe you see the #iran hashtag and you say to yourself ‘What’s that about?“ you click and discover that there’s this huge thing going on and, if you care enough, you start to dig deeper and get actively involved.

Spreading a message is not an inactivity. Exposing people who wouldn’t ordinarily know that these things were going on cannot possibly be useless. While Gladwell might point to those latte-sipping hipster activists posting calls-to-arms to their Twitter feed, they forget the enthusiastic person on the other end that hears the tweet and actually does something about it.

I think this relates to a question I asked/reported in my second Ubud Writers and Readers Festival post. Does one have to be an activist 24/7 for the work to be meaningful? Some people feel strongly one does – but does that discount more occasional acts of commitment? But certainly there has to be some ACTION at some point.

Good question. I would suppose that to be called an activist you have to engage in some activity, some action.

And I don’t think that mass tweets and hashtags are really ‘action’ in this sense of the word. But what they are is promoting awareness. I’m not an activist by a long shot, but I am aware of a lot more than I would be if I didn’t have Twitter pointing me to articles and news reports. An aware person can become an activist. An unaware person can not.

I think that Twitter serves as another avenue of making the connection between unaware and aware.

Oh. I couldn’t be a 24/7 activist, need to garden, play, nap! And one of the nice things about Twitter is that when I’m tired of being an activist I can play there, with other screenwriters on #scriptchat, with mothers who tweet. It’s like a cafe without having to go out. And there’s always the possibility of an activist conversation or shared activist project (this week, for me, in a small way, it’s supporting Campbell X’s Stud LIfe movie on Indiegogo: http://tinyurl.com/24pfcey). And there’s also the cafe possibility of falling in love, or sharing a joke, or just listening to others going tweet and woot.

I contemplated this issue when Gladwell’s article came out and disagree with his definition of activism. I believe the nature of activism has changed, and think the problem with Gladwell’s main argument could be generational.

I say more here: http://lyrianfleming.com/post/1221259736/why-the-revolution-might-be-tweeted-in-ten-years-time

But in general think the argument is one worth having, and like the debate Gladwell has sparked.