Are friends electric?

I tweet, oh yes. I am a fan of the Twitter, and I lob my 140 character or fewer word grenades over the fence of my solitude into a digital universe daily, sometimes hourly.

And I catch a few coming back the way, and a conversation will start, sometimes serious, sometimes silly, sometimes just plain strange. Indeed, on one single follow Friday I was described as surreal by two different tweeps.

Yes I like my Twitter, and have taken to it more than many things I can remember. It has become my social life. And, as someone said the other day, how sad is that?

Well, not so sad, I think, it suits me and it suits modern life. Let’s start with me. I’m an introvert. In the classical Jungian sense, I prefer to be alone, I find company tiring, it uses my energy up. I’ll do it, but if I’m sat in a pub, chances are I’m in the corner with a book rather than with a circle of friends holding court as raconteur.

Ipods, iphones, etc, make us more insular, more remote and introverted. We live in crowded times. The human population grows exponentially, we have less and less space, so what personal space we have we start to value more, and protect more, and keep more.

For me, social life as in going out, being with people, becomes an intrusion. Loud, noisy, unpredictable – you’re with friends now, then who knows who will be next through the door, pushing, shouting, having a go, invading your space crowding you. Human spam, in real life with booze-fuelled anger, Primark trousers and SportsDirect.com shoes and shirt.

Instead, I can talk, chat, be the raconteur, the shining wit – a David Niven in 140 characters or less, on Twitter. I can make friends, as I effectively have, and I can ignore the spam with no risk or threat. I can be alone and with my friends as I see fit and they see fit, just with a thumb on an iphone.

I can offer support and advice, a virtual shoulder to cry on, a daft joke to lighten a day, a surreal rant about our pet rabbits to confuse, amuse, defuse, and everyone I’m following can do the same to me. I follow true geniuses, I follow real, ordinary people with real, ordinary lives like mine, and they are there for me, just as I am there for them.

I’m the modern man, the future. Friends are better, easier, more productive in digital form.

That said, anyone fancy a pint? IRL?