The Abstract or; Why I Love Twitter and You Should Too
Here I sit, in Bang og Jensen on a Tuesday morning, with the smell of croissants in my nose, and a warm coffee before me, while I wait for the phone call to tell me that our new flat has been painted, and I can come home. Home. I still can't believe that we live there. Each morning (OK, two so far) I wake up and see the beams above me, and try to convince myself that yes, I do live here, and yes, this will be my view for many, many more mornings. How insanely lucky I - we - are.
The past couple of weeks have been pretty hectic for me. As some of you know I handed in my MA thesis on the 28th, a burden which has taken, and is taking, some time to get used to not having. Burden is the wrong word. It was never that. It simply gave me something to do, all the time. I haven't had, quite literally, free time for the past 5 months. Of course I've done other things (I even went to Morocco for a week), but it rarely left my head. You know how it is. Luckily, I really found my subject choice interesting, and still do, more importantly (not to mention impressively). I still believe in what I wrote, and hope one day I can discuss it with someone - which of course I will get the chance to do during my oral defence (sometime within the next four weeks). I'm looking forward to that, not because it will signal the true end of my education (and give me a grade), but because it gives me the opportunity to try to argue my points and defend my thesis. Bring it on.
I remember from when I handed in my BA thesis, the odd feeling of having nothing to do, and it was the same again two years later. The day after I sat on the sofa, took a nap, and generally did nothing, but felt extremely guilty. Luckily, I think, I had plenty to do. We were due to move into a new flat on the 31st, so the remainding bits and bobs had to be packed, and the whole flat cleaned. This was relatively painless, and on the 31st, we moved. The move was also relatively painless, despite the movers being 1½ hours late, and despite the fact that we were moving from the first floor, to the fifth - with no lift. Currently, we're living out of boxes, and as mentioned in the first paragraph, waiting for it to be painted. With that over, we can unpack, and make our home, home.
I can't wait.
You might be wondering where Twitter fits into all of this, so let me explain.
I handed my thesis in alone; I live in Copenhagen, my school is in Århus. Most of my classmates had already handed their theses in, so I wasn't expecting to see anyone there. I wondered if it was going to be a little lonely, or a bit of a anti-climax, and thought about this quite a lot the evening before, and early (my 3 hour train ride left Copenhagen at 5am) the next morning. However, my first tweet congratulating me arrived at around 4.50am, and they went on, all day. I know to some it might be small fry, but the total of 49 congratulatory tweets made my day. Every time I checked my phone, I had a new tweet. Some came from people I've never met, some came from those I've met once, others from people I've met a number of times, some came from loved ones; all counted, and all contributed to the elation I felt.
Thank you.
So those were the tweets. But some of those who put fingers to keyboards, together with others, also turned up on the day of our move, waited in the cold for the movers, and then sweat buckets for us. Lugging stuff up to the fifth floor is, let me assure you, not fun. Through an event on Facebook, we recruited 15 (un)willing souls to help us, and all (including one 'maybe') showed up, despite the cold, despite knowing what lay ahead, and spent the best part of four hours shifting boxes up stairs. A lot of stairs. After a beer or two, and slices of pizza, they left, and Thilde and I sat and looked around us, at our new home.
What we would have done without those who helped is beyond me. I am so incredibly grateful to those who helped, some of whom we've met through Twitter, some through jobs, and some from years back. I can't wait until we can throw a housewarming, and give a little back to those who gave their time on a grey Sunday.
Thank you.
It might be because a lot has happened recently, leaving me a little raw, but I'm just so touched by all this. I love my new friends, I love my old friends. I love our new home. I love Twitter and I love Facebook. Anyone who doesn't understand the whole fuss, especially over Twitter, just isn't doing it right.
And now for the abstract....
Some people asked if they could see the abstract from my thesis, and here it is; click me.
My thesis title was 'Digimodernism; the Future is Now!' and sought to answer the problem statement of; how does the shift into digimodernism radically alter society, further upsetting the balance between consumer and marketing, and what challenges does this shift present to marketing communications?
Digimodernism is a term coined by Alan Kirby, author of 'Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure Our Culture.' In essence, digimodernism is "the impact of computerization on all forms of art, culture and textuality. It is also the dominant cultural force field of the 21st century, the successor to a postmodernism which reigned supreme throughout the 1980s and 1990s but is now widely felt to have had its day. The digimodernist hypothesis is that computerization has restructured or will restructure every form of textuality we know. It is not limited to online network culture."
In my paper, I examined the inevitable effect this has on media consumption, and thus, marketing. I thought the results were pretty interesting. Maybe you will too. I'll upload the whole paper once I'm graded. Unless I get a crap grade.