Is Twitter a stage (re-edited)

The stage has always been part of human civilizations. We have always had a need to tell stories. Take a caveman painting a hunting scene on a wall, this was not the action of a lonely artist sitting in a cave by himself, it was a social occasion. We can just see the largest and bravest caveman being taunted by his fellow hunters with innuendos about size of his spear. The rules for theater etiquette started being evolving in those gatherings.

The ancient Romans had a strict social hierarchy in their theater seating arrangements, at first only the elite got to sit, later everyone sat but the elite sat in the first few rows. The rules of etiquette in a Roman theater audience were few, when blood sports are on the stage few restrictions are placed on the behavior of the audience. In the Globe the elite would actually sit on the stage. From those cave days to today we have developed a complex set of rules for behavior on and around a stage.

A few rules of etiquette are common sense and widely understood, you should arrive on time. Recently a veteran Brazilian actress managed to pass a law preventing people who arrive late from entering the theater during the performance. You should refrain from talking, especially to the actors on stage, and on your cell phone. But there is a lesser-known theater rule of etiquette that was never posted in the lobby: don't pinch the actor’s butt. Once in an off-Broadway theater I was on an aisle seat of a Frank Langella play in which the sword fight could not be contained to the stage and in a lunge motion Mr. Langella's butt was inches from my shoulder. My mother, who has always been a bad influence, whispered to me "pinch it". Even though the no-butt-pinching rule is not explicit, if I had pinched the butt of the most gorgeous man to walk the earth, I would have been kicked out of the theater and probably banned from Broadway. Heckling is a few notches below butt pinching, but still unacceptable. Throwing things on stage, unwrapping noisy candy, kicking the chair in front of you, wearing tall hats, etc. are all against etiquette.

So is Twitter a stage? Do the rules of etiquette apply to Twitter interactions? When I follow a celebrity on Twitter is he or she on a stage and am I in the audience? Is Twitter just another technological advancement of the stage, like trap doors and pulley systems or better lighting, or is it a brave new world? Am I heckling an actor on a stage if I post 140 characters that irk him, am I disrupting the audience if I post a lame story in his audience's timeline, or tweet him incessantly with mundane comments?

Twitter allows celebrities and brands to interact directly with the public, to have specific and personal conversations with the audience, so it is not a stage.  At the same time the information in such cases flows in one direction: one celebrity communicates to thousands or millions of followers in the audience, so it is a stage. But there is no script, no direction and no actual stage, so it can’t be a stage.  What the hell is it?

Recently Setephen Fry threatened to walk off Twitter because someone in his audience commented that his tweets are boring.  "I admire and adore Fry, but his tweets a bit... boring... (sorry Stephen).”  So is that the equivalent of a bad review on the NY post? Is it enough to shut down production, turn off the lights and send the caterer home?  Apparently to Stephen Fry it almost was.  Open praise and criticism is part of the communication in Twitter, but was Fry heckled on stage? Did someone throw an egg and some tomatoes onto his Twitter stage?  Brent Spiner on the other hand takes a completely different approach.  Instead of walking off Twitter when hecklers spit venom at him he adds them in his list of favorites.  Twitter provides a separate space for people to save their favorite tweets and Mr. Spiner’s is filled with the most evil and vile comments lobbed at him from the orchestra seats. He takes back control of his Twitter by turning the spot light on the troublemaker.

So is Twitter a stage? Twitter is a conversation, a stage, a seat in a lecture auditorium, crowd of strangers, a bunch of friends over for a barbecue, a news channel, graffiti on a wall, a short story, a poem, a star trek convention, an art gallery, a hug and a slap on the face all at the same time and in the same place. Suddenly the rules we spent millions of years perfecting don't apply. It's a brave new world and we are starting from scratch.  New rules must be developed, the problem is that new etiquette rules take hundreds of years to evolve and gain acceptance, but the technology that creates the necessity for those new rules evolves in a matter of months.  By the time we come up with some sort of Twitter etiquette we will be wondering if it’s rude to use the new telepathy gadget to get some racy images out of George Clooney’s girlfriend’s head.