Yi on Twitter – or, “three thousand year old oracle meets microblogging app” – or something.
Hm.
What’s Twitter? As far as I can make out, it’s a strange little hybrid of a blog and an instant messaging client: people post personal updates, thoughts of the moment and links to their Twitter page, and also respond to one another’s messages, often directing their response at (@) that individual specifically.
It looks suspiciously like a gigantic time leech – like a trivialised, multiplied version of the email inbox. It’s also full of people who seem to have discovered this mid-flow, so that their status on Twitter is frozen in time as ‘Eating dinner 9 months ago‘ or ‘Looking at a pile of work on my desk 8 months ago‘ or ‘Wondering what the point of this Twitter thing is 1 year ago‘.
But reading the remarkable ways people describe it, there seems to be more to it when seen from the inside. It seems it could be a new way of connecting with people online – more real, less choreographed and ‘presented’. Now that interests me.
So I started ‘tweeting’ – yes, that is what they call it, and it does make me sound like a baby bird – on Wednesday, just dipping my toes in to test the water. Before I find myself sucked too far in, though, I wanted to find out what Yi made of it.
Yi, what happens at Twitter? What is all that activity?
Hexagram 15, Integrity, moving at the 4th and 6th lines to 35, Prospering.
Integrity Prospering? Authenticity moved by a chance to make the most of its opportunities? Definitely interesting.
Twitter seems a natural habitat for hexagram 15’s small-animal protagonist. People are seen here through the minutiae of their actions and thoughts; you see yourself mirrored in the same way. The ‘brand image’ or the bigger stories people might like to tell about themselves are nowhere to be seen.
But it also seems as though all these little grains of conversation (/earth) could reveal the bedrock (/mountain) below the surface. What people write, and what they’re paying attention to, paints an authentic portrait in a pointillistic sort of style. It also seems to do something for my own self-awareness: seeing the small animal and realising this is me. “What are you doing?” it asks, all day, though perhaps it should be asking, “What are you noticing?” And if I’m to answer, it must be in 140 characters or less, which helps to cut the waffle.
The relating hexagram makes sense to me, too: it’s one of those relating hexagrams that clearly reflects personal motivation. After all, I’m meant to be running a business here. I’m looking for gifts of horses and ways to ‘breed a multitude’ from them – how to make the most of the opportunities I’m given. A new channel of communication – one that people choose to follow, and that can’t be blocked by over-enthusiastic spam filters without their knowledge – is bound to catch my attention. Part of my reason for asking is to know whether I can prosper here. The answer comes back: your small, authentic, humble self can prosper.
The moving lines speak for themselves.
‘Nothing that does not bear fruit,
Demonstrating integrity.’
and
‘Integrity calling out
Harvest in mobilising the army
And bringing order to the city.’
People get to demonstrate who they are here – you get to hear their distinctive, identifying calls. The character for ‘calling out’ actually means the cries of animals and birds, and shows a bird and open mouth. (So Yi actually has a word for ‘tweeting’ – who knew?) And there’s also a hint that it would all work better if I were to move a little more thoughtfully (line 4 with 62), react a little less (line 6 with 52), and not be afraid to approach it with a purpose and some self-control.
If you want to see how (or whether) I manage this, I twitter here.