I joined Twitter in November 2013.

Though, I didn’t earnestly join until around early 2017. Before then, I was a Facebook fanboy. I joined Twitter in 2013 just to secure my Twitter handle: @ChrisGGarrod.

The thing about Facebook, when I look at it now… the friends I had and who received my posts, replying or commenting on them (and by posts, I mean things like photos of their kids, holiday photos, etc.), weren’t really my friends. Some were people I knew from high school, or college, ex-work colleagues from London. Some are people I work with. Some I don’t even know.

Some I don’t even know.

So, gradually, I got bored, and I discovered a new outlet, Twitter. Or rediscovered it. A few things then happened.

I’m partly an insurance lawyer, so I began to connect with insurance and reinsurance colleagues and started following some of the blogs and press in that industry. I added news journals like The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Inc., The Washington Post, etc., to my list of followings. I also started the following on or about Bermuda, our news, our politicians, etc.

Then, I fell into the #resist crowd. Those who disliked Donald Trump (a lot.) All of a sudden, a group of others – #theresistance – and whatever other handle you wanted to use came into the picture, all of us retweeting left-wing stories, memes, etc., which were anti-Trump.

At that point, inadvertently, my followers grew. Other than the relatively normal folks who I started following, I also ended up in a crowd of… well, people who I agreed with, I suppose, from one end of the political spectrum but who weren’t to my taste.

As in likely lunatics.

Shedding the followers, I don’t care about and following the people I do care about.

First and foremost. I now don’t care about followers.

A lot of people do. Oh, probably most people, I’d say, on Twitter do. At first, I did.

I fell into the trap of using apps to buy followers. I didn’t spend loads of money but whatever I did was a complete waste of time. I ended up with followers I had no interest in or had anything in common with, and eventually, they just unfollowed me. I was naive.

So that was lesson number one.

Lesson number two: don’t just follow someone back because they have randomly followed you. You might end up keeping that person as a follower because of the “Hey, thanks for following me!” factor, but ask yourself, “Why am I following someone I just don’t care about?” To try to gain followers? I didn’t want to be in the position of having 50,000 followers while trying to keep up with 48,000 following.

I ended up with lesson number three, an invaluable lesson I’ve learned from many of the people I now follow. Only follow the people you want to follow. Forget about the numbers. Who cares?

Forget about the numbers. So what next?

The learning part. I became interested in FinTech, specifically blockchain.

It was mid-2017, so blockchain – if you think about Bitcoin being the first blockchain invented in 2008 – was still very nascent (I think it still is.) I became fascinated by the technology behind it. I asked for a whiteboard in my office to doodle on. Centralized and decentralized versions. Using smart contracts and cryptography… opened a new world I’d never come across.

It was just neat.

Following that robotics, automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things. I started following people well-known in these areas who would constantly post articles regarding this… stuff.

So I also went onto LinkedIn and added to my biography something along the lines of “Interests include FinTech and the use of blockchain.”

One evening, in my kitchen, my iPhone rang. I answered using my AppleWatch, I remember. The CFO of an e-gaming, e-sports company, wanted to set up a Bermuda company to issue digital tokens. They had Googled “Bermuda blockchain lawyer,” and my name was the first hit. The company was Unikrn, the first crypto company to be formed in Bermuda.

It was late 2017, and at the time, it garnered quite a bit of attention within Bermuda’s business development industry and the Bermuda Government.

That was then – I had a great time. I was thrown onto various committees, jetted off to various conferences, and spoke on loads of panels, the last being the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2020.

Of course, the COVID pandemic put an end to all of that, but in the meantime, throughout that time, I was enjoying myself on Twitter while continuing to learn not just about FinTech anymore. AI Ethics, data privacy (e.g., facial recognition), cybersecurity, women in tech, DEI and ESG, and BigTech. So, so much. All through following and digesting what others have posted.

So what?

I’ve met a lot of people on Twitter, and a number I’d call “really cool people to follow,” some are sending me tweets and “I don’t know why, but the tweets are still interesting,” and others are “these are my peeps.”

In one of my other blogs, I mentioned the concept of “collective effervescence.” I was a social anthropologist before I fell into the world of law (go figure), so Emile Durkheim, the sociologist who coined it, was someone close to my heart. It’s the notion that a group of individuals could unify as a group, all communicating together (sometimes due to an event – COVID perhaps being one.) It appears all over Twitter and elsewhere: #BlackLivesMatter, the #Resistance, #AIEthics…

Sports examples: “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is sung by almost every fan when Liverpool Football Club plays at Anfield. “Take me out to the Ball Game” as a baseball equivalent.

Putting COVID aside, I’ve probably met more people on Twitter who have the same common interests I do (after all these years on Twitter), where I feel that there is a sense of collective effervescence. Interests, and the well-being of those others… an underlying unity, albeit comical at times. And very serious at times as well.

But whatever – it is always fascinating.

I love Twitter, and I adore the people I’ve come across. Whether I follow them, or they follow me, or we chat together (the latter especially.)

I pretty much have forgotten about Facebook. LinkedIn is great from a professional standpoint but lacks personality (plus, I keep getting asked if I need investment advice.) And please don’t mention TikTok (please.)

I enjoy my #FollowFridays, and I’ll always enjoy getting coffee posts, bunny, Lego, and Barolo wine posts, and wanna-be FinTech rock band posts. Bermuda vs. Winnipeg weather. That sort of stuff.

And I’ll still, always, always love the incredible content I’ll get from the people, news outlets, blogs, or organizations that interest me, which are recommended or tweeted by those I follow.

Just don’t follow for the following sake. Follow who matters.

PS: I hope my tweets aren’t actually twits. ?

Chris Garrod – January 2022