VIT - and proud of it

Very Important Tweeps have trounced the grand old status of the Very Important Person.

Now, suddenly, smart social media marketers have clued up to the fact that the Twitterati are the communicators of the moment. We are not simply as good as our follower figures in spreading the world, but have limitless exponential potential according to the powers of the ReTweet.

It was the marketing person for the Cavalia horse spectacular, which is some offshoot of the Cirque du Soleil mob, who first called me a VIT. She was inviting me, in that capacity, to a free night of the horse experience.

The idea was to bring the VITs together and have them ecstatically Tweeting en masse.

That is a great idea.

As cruel irony would have it, when this invitation arrived, I was suffering the rare indignation of being muted on Twitter. Poor me.

I was overseas in the ricefields of Bali. The invitation leaked slowly down a third world internet connection which optimistically called itself 'wireless".

We VITs have a frustrating time when we're denied instant communications. We're VITs because we're communication addicts. I've been at it since before day one, so I can remember back to the early days of dialup. I never want to go back.

More prestigious by far than being a VIP is being a VIT.

But out there amid farmer women hand-threshing the rice crops in the field, one feels churlish about complaining that your spam is at a trickle, your email is queued and that your Telco has extortionate roaming fees which forces one to keep the phone off. I did the enlightened thing. I let go of the First World.

So I did not even try to RSVP to this wonderful invitation.

But I certainly thought about it.

Way to go, I thought.

Zeitgeist, I thought.

Once, as a newspaper theatre critic, I represented the immense power of mainstream print. Those were the days when people were eager for newspapers to come out with the precious first reviews of new shows. Now those are the olden days. Print media is shrinking. At the same time, the public is wary of paying for online subscriptions. And no one wants to wait for anything.

Social media has stepped up and usurped the old publicity machinations. Instant gratification meets the global parish pump.

And, I'd better Tweet this before it goes out of date.