The words travel and politics conjure up almost every shared dining experience on a cruise ship but no, this post has nothing to do with that. You might want to read something else because my brain is spilling words onto internet pages once again.
A travel blogger recently posted a couple of tweets bemoaning the fact that some other travel bloggers were posting political tweets. He wondered whether those travel bloggers’ followers really wanted to see political tweets and suggested that it was the sort of thing that could impact the desirability of those travel bloggers to brands.
I disagree with this travel blogger for a number of reasons and want to explain why but I don’t want to name names so I’ll just call this travel blogger Barry when I refer to him.
Brand Desirability
Let’s start by thinking about desirability when it comes to brands and choosing people to work with. Firstly, there’s the influence that person has, which is generally measured by number of users and paid bots that person has following them on their social platforms. Secondly, there’s… well, nothing, as far as I can tell. Maybe attractiveness features in there somewhere? It certainly seems that brands like their partners to mostly look the same and produce more-or-less templated content but that’s not a concrete rule. It doesn’t seem likely to me that a few political posts are going to rule a person out of being considered for promotional work unless those posts are virally controversial or the person making the decision happens to disagree with the politics and wants to include spite as part of the selection process. Even then, when results are measured in numbers of interactions (perhaps), it’s arguable that anything other than reach is considered.
The thing about Barry, though, is that Barry doesn’t post political tweets so this shouldn’t be something that would concern him. His content isn’t exclusively travel-related but there’s nothing too controversial about heading off to the theatre. The reason for his tweet then comes down to one of two possibilities: either he’s a deeply caring person, worried (unnecessarily in my opinion, as explained above) about the livelihood of other travel bloggers who enjoy a close working relationship with travel brands, and he wants to start a discussion, or he simply doesn’t want to see any (or certain) political posts from the people he follows and would like them to take his not-so-subtle hint and use some self-censorship in that respect.
It’s impossible to say which of those two possibilities is the real one because despite years of working on my Mind Reading Top Hat it simply refuses to balance on my head properly. Although I would offer up as evidence against discussion that Barry liked or engaged with every response that agreed wholeheartedly with his viewpoint whilst completely ignoring any response that offered a differing opinion. But there could be an innocent explanation for that and it is, ultimately, his decision to engage with people engaging with him in whichever way he chooses.
Tweets And Likes
If a brand were to look at someone’s tweets and determine that some were grounds to not consider that person for work then what about someone’s likes? A Twitter user’s likes are as much public record as the tweets. If a brand were going to look at a user’s tweets to make sure that the person had not expressed any viewpoint on politics then they’d need to consider the likes too because, depending how you use Twitter, these can be promoted into followers’ streams or, if you’re using a real-time system (like I do) then you’ll see people’s likes appearing as they like them (so, yes everyone, it’s dead easy to tell when people aren’t reading other people’s posts and are simply liking a whole bunch of tweets without any meaningful interaction or appreciation for them).
If the likes have visibility – admittedly, not to the same degree as tweets – then it stands to reason that any account that does decide to stay pure to its topic must on no account ever like anything not related to that topic too. Tricky.
Incidentally, yes, I’ve seen a lot of things that Barry has liked in the past that I found quite surprising. Political things.
Tribes
The timing of Barry’s tweets about the mix of politics with travel is interesting. It followed on the back of a momentous day in UK politics where one party was absolutely handed its arse by the supreme judiciary in the land. Many people were understandably elated that criminal activity had been slapped down – myself included – but there were also many who were angry at the decision: people embarrassed to be supporting bullies looking out for their own self-interests, people who’d forgotten that the ruling wasn’t a political one but now they assumed it was because they didn’t like it, people who have the Daily Mail read to them, etc.
I have no way of telling for certain whether the tweets that triggered Barry were all those of a political nature regardless of left-leaning or right-leaning views, were only those overjoyed to see the legal system working as it should, or were only those furious that the legal system wasn’t something that could be welded by the unaccountable to suppress dissent. Again, sorry about the whole Top Hat situation but some things just can’t be helped. With how human nature works, though, it’s most likely to have been those that were simply at odds with Barry’s own views (whatever they were) and this is even more probable when you reconsider that there was no engagement with tweets that didn’t support his initial remarks about politics in general.
Humans are tribal by nature. There’s the family tribe; there’s the community tribe; there’s the city tribe; there’s the national tribe; there’s the global tribe when the aliens finally attack and force us to pick sides. There are tribes for every opinion or belief so the religious tribes are there and the political tribes are there and the sporting tribes are there too. We accept what’s in our tribe far more easily than we accept what’s in another tribe. We’re all guilty of it. If I see someone I follow having a go at the Conservatives then because I’m in the centrist/liberal tribe politically I quietly applaud that person; if I see someone I’m following retweeting something positive about Trump, on the other hand, or something gushing praise about homeopathy, perhaps, then I almost certainly will no longer follow that person. They’re definitely not in my tribe and they’re also not in a tribe with which I can coexist peacefully. Which brings me to…
How To Use Twitter
If you don’t like posts on a specific topic then mute relevant keywords.
If you don’t like what someone posts generally then don’t follow them.
If you don’t like what someone posts and you don’t follow them but you still see their tweets on occasion because other people you know interact with them then blocking is your friend.
On your Twitter stream you can post whatever you like… so long as it abides by the Terms and Conditions, of course.
Don’t try to tell other people what to post, even passively. It’s not a good look. It is, however, an indicator of certain political tribal affiliations.
Twitter Travel People
I post the odd political thing on my travel Twitter account. I post the odd thing that’s neither travel-related nor political. Yes, the account is primarily for travel information and spamming the content of this site but it’s also my account for interacting with people with similar interests and sometimes a bit of me comes out. That sounds disgusting.
I’m not as interested in people who are one-dimensional as I am in people with whom I can build up more of a profile. It’s quite likely that my wife and I will meet up with numerous Twitter folk on our travels and the last thing we want to do is spend the entire time fixated on one subject. A meeting where everyone talks about the one thing they all write about or produce videos about already? That’s a whole heaping of dull right there.
There are Twitter travel people that I know we would get on well with because they’ve posted about things outside that bubble. There are Twitter travel people with whom I suspect we’d have a few conflicts of opinion based on what they’ve published but that’s good too because I’m an argumentative little shit and respect a well-reasoned opposing view. There are Twitter travel people I cannot form an opinion about because they stick rigidly to the topic and may as well be a robot for all the humanity that emerges. I’m mostly indifferent to that latter group. Maybe they’re good for brands and good for those who don’t like to be reminded they’re in different tribes but they leave me cold and that chill tends to seep into their content.
Finally
To answer Barry’s tweet: yes, I do want to see political tweets (or any topic) from the people I follow if it’s something they feel strongly about because it makes them more approachable. It’s their Twitter account, though. It’s their decision. I have tools at my disposal to determine how I view their content and I can make the decision whether to follow or not but it’s not for me to try to control what they say even if under the guise of a postulated thought in a tweet.
Anyway, just thoughts for posterity to be buried on the blog. As with all potentially controversial blog posts and because this refers to a specific and terribly-anonymised person I’ll not be promoting this one on social media. I like a good argument in person but nobody ever wins an online one.
Don’t panic. The usual travelogues and promotions of travel-related content found online will resume shortly.
Diversity in journalism 100%. Well written.