Stendhal Syndrome

Twitter Revolution

Rayner Banham said that in order to read the landscape of Los Angeles he learned to drive. The implication of this, of course, is that anyone who is incapable of driving (poor, young, old), or who wishes not to drive, is rendered illiterate, incapable not only of reading the landscape but of authoring, of influencing and creating the world around them.

Similarly, talk of the Twitter Revolution denotes an implicit bias towards the technologically literate, that is, a minority of Iranians. The voices that are overwhelmingly being heard over the Internet are the “University students, university graduates and the highest-income Iranians.” These are the groups with the means and sophistication to access and exploit such a web-based service. They are also the only portion of Iran’s population that leans towards the reformist candidate Mousavi, as an independent US Poll conducted in the weeks leading up to the election showed. There must also be doubts about the objectivity and veracity of twitter updates - just who is checking sources here?

You may also have heard the bullshit on The Daily Show or CNN, intended to raise doubts over the election, about how Mousavi didn’t even win in his home province. Yet the pollsters found that Azeris favoured Ahmadinejad over Mousavi by a ratio of almost two to one:

“Other groups, such as Azeris, to whom Mr Mousavi was considered likely to appeal because of his Azeri background, also showed stronger support for Mr Ahmadinejad ahead of Mr Mousavi.

Only 16% of Azeris said they intended to vote for Mr Mousavi, compared to 31% who said they would vote for Mr Ahmadinejad.”

The real story here is not about the election and its legitimacy but how the Iranian government has responded to demonstrations, and about the cultural divide in modern-day Iran. Unfortunately for those demonstrating, they aren’t greater in number than their more culturally conservative counterparts, they’re just louder, and tweet more than Tila Tequila.