Trend of thought

Hello,

If you are not into geeky/nerdy ish you can ignore this essay.

With that said, here we go --- in my defence: I am in a very hot room and extremely tired, so I am easily irritated.

So, with that energy I can rant.

You know that thing, that twitter calls: trends? If not, it's okay you don't have to be on twitter regardless of what that person's bio on twitter says:

social media strategist --- but, one of these days I will write another essay about how this [social media strategist] is a farce (read: bull shit).

So, a twitter trend is described as:

the most common phrases currently appearing in messages.

Which is fantastic when

1. Obama was getting inaugurated;
2. or when the swine flu hit;
3. or when the plane landed on The Hudson river;
4. or when Michael Jackson died;
5. or when the Sugababes lost/fired that not-so-pretty black girl;
6. or when the FIFA Confederation Cup went down;
7. or when we (South Africans) were voting;
8. or when the Iran election thingy-magic-thing went down
9. or when something is happening right now

I hope you are following my, chain of thought --- the beauty I find in twitter is that a topic trends because people are talking about the same thing that is going on outside of twitter (and trending-hash-tags are topics within a virtual system).

I read on Wired (Clive Thompson on How the Real-Time Web Is Leaving Google Behind):

Google organized our memory. Real-Time Search [Twitter] organizes our consciousness." — Edo Segal

What that implies to me is that Twitter tells us what the collective conscious is thinking; talking about; or experiencing; but the important thing is:

What our reality is, right now.

Now, note (I know I sound condescending, but hey, an argument is laid out to be won, no?) the key words in that is conscious and reality.  That means we are thinking in context to our existence, which I can construe to mean: our current environment (state of the being, maybe?)

Now, enter those, hash-tagged trending topics --  I will admit they were fun in the beginning: #chrisbrownsbowtie was quite funny, from an observation point of view --- I know South Africans are proud of trending: #whenwewereyoung (or something like that).

But, my question is:

beyond the short term gratification of 'being the person who started a trend' what value are they to our 'collective consciousness'?

You see my rant: I hate trend setters, period.

*sips on more coca-cola.

*inhales nicotine.

Yeah sure, this rant of an essay won't stop them and you might not agree:

but I'd like to think as a social collective there is an inherent good our shared experiences bring about (que: iran-election).

If that is not true -- then, what social contract (by this I mean as people there is way we engage with each other in real life that is not supposed to be harmful, but useful to each and everyone involved) is there in a social network, if assuming it is a indeed a social network?

*phew, at least that's off my chest.