How much do you care about what other people are paying attention to?

I am thinking about Twitter. What makes Twitter work, as far as I can tell (I don’t use it), is the notion that people can point out things they think are important, and make quips about same. It has turned into a way to take the temperature of the Zeitgeist, as you track “trending” items; items that a lot of people are tweeting about.

Clearly Twitter works. Lots of people tweet. They follow stuff. They follow others. It’s marketing. It’s news.

I generally don’t care what other people follow because most of it seems so trivial. But I’m worse than that. I don’t care what my friends follow. What I’m saying is I don’t care what they follow just because they are friends. I only care if they give me a reason to follow something.

Yet Twitter depends on people following something just because someone they know follows it. It’s like a flock of birds, and the bird at the front changes direction, and all the other birds do, too.

I’m not saying I’m immune to social pressure, but that I can’t do it instinctually. What about you?

Do you check out things your friends tell you about? It could be via tweet, or Facebook, or Pinterest or reblogging or some other similar site. Do you ignore most of it? All of it? Do you deliberately ignore everything your friends follow? Or do you check out most of it or all of it? Do you check out things that people you don’t know mention?

Furthermore, do you consider yourself to be on top of the trends? Is it important to you to know what is going on?

I am not on top of the trends, although I am inordinately proud of myself when I know about something before others do, and fluther often seems to give me that information. It is, however, important for me to know what is going on. The important stuff. And somehow—maybe it is just my prejudice—it seems like fluther handles more weighty matters, in general, than the blogosphere or Twitterverse do.