Australia has been utterly captivated over the past week, but not by the old motherland's general election or the hoopla over its own federal budget. The biggest story has concerned nothing but a couple of tweets.
It started with Australia's annual television awards (the unfortunately named "Logies"), which inspired comedian and the Age newspaper columnist, Catherine Deveny, to let fly on Twitter. When Steve Irwin's 11-year-old daughter hit the red carpet, Deveny observed: "I do so hope Bindi Irwin gets laid." On seeing fellow comedian Rove McManus, who lost his wife to cancer in 2006, she tweeted: "Rove and [new wife] Tasma look so cute … hope she doesn't die, too."
It took two days of public outrage before the Age sacked Deveny, setting the Twitter and blogospheres further aflutter. Even a week after the story broke, Deveny's response on a rival website clocked over 900 comments from crowing anti-Devenyists and aggrieved "free speech" supporters.
Yet beyond debates over Deveny's comedic style, what is really interesting about the episode is her complete surprise that her tweeting had consequences. As Australia woke up to a collective post-Logies hangover, Deveny likened the brewing kerfuffle to "passing notes in class, but suddenly these notes are being projected into the sky and taken out of context". "Twitter is online graffiti, not a news source," she said.
Despite having some 5,000 followers (a big class to pass notes in), Deveny is not the first to cry foul that Twitter is supposed to be a harmless, fun-loving haven for bon mots. On Cif this week, writer Paul Chambers expressed surprise that his ill-advised (though clearly non-threatening) tweet about blowing up Robin Hood airport was noticed by authorities: "I didn't even think about whether it would be taken seriously."
When Labour candidate for Moray, Stuart MacLennan, was sacked last month after tweets like "God this fairtrade, organic banana is shit. Can I have a slave-grown, chemically enhanced, genetically modified one please", the Telegraph's Toby Young was incensed. Similarly, when young Australian conservative, Nick Sowden, was expelled from the Queensland Liberal party after a tweet comparing Barack Obama to a monkey, he argued he'd been taken out of context: "I think the people who follow me know [it's a joke] and the people who are my friends know and the people on Twitter don't unfortunately."
Since its 2006 launch, and particularly over the past year, Twitter has claimed countless casualties, regardless of their celebrity, political, sporting, media or regular-everyday status. From John Mayer to Courtney Love, Siôn Simon, Phil Hughes, Russell Brand and Stephen Fry, no one is immune from a tweet that goes too far, is misconstrued or stirs up trouble. Indeed, last week after condemning Deveny to obscurity, top Australian columnist Miranda Devine caused a Twitter storm of her own, responding to a fellow tweeter with: "You've had enough of rogering gerbils I see."
Like so many forms of technology, Twitter has evolved. It's no longer an intimate salon where you can say what you want, no holds barred, or a benign means to amuse your friends and followers. It's a major communication, news and PR tool, with over 100 million account holders, whose public tweets are now destined for the archives of the US Library of Congress.
Thanks to the non-stop, interconnected nature of today's media, it isn't feasible to assume things will stay where we put them. Just as we learned (through embarrassing gaffes) that emails can be forwarded beyond their intended audience, our employers and parents can see our blogs and Facebook pages and making a sex tape in the privacy of your own home is no guarantee it will stay there, we need to get real about the power and very public nature of Twitter.
Sad indictment upon the times or not, it would be disingenuous to keep burying our heads in the web.