Enough is enough. I’m okay with everyone and their uncle tweeting about matters that I couldn’t care less about, but I don’t want my Prime Minister to tweet in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. More importantly, I hate the publicity the government is giving me.

Let’s talk about the tweets first. Twitter is fine, if you want to throw out a quick opinion for discussion, share a moment of fun, or inform someone of an upcoming event. It’s even fine for an outright lie as long as your followers are not too critical. Twitter does not lend itself to unambiguous political messages. On Twitter there is no space to get caught in the details.  Basically, Twitter is a good platform for explaining your corona strategy only if you happen to be Donald Trump.

As long as Twitter is used to advocate random corona cures and hurl unsubstantiated Obamagate accusations, it should not be used as a serious medium by Finland’s leaders. It’s like publishing your message in the yellow press. It’s fine if you are Kim Kardashian, but not if you are Finland’s Prime Minister. 

Tweets are all too often spur-of-the-moment bursts of something; be it joy or anger, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, energy or depression. Ill-considered tweets are probably a big part of the charm of the medium.

I can see the fun in that, even if I prefer to experience things, such as this little museum in Soller, Mallorca, live rather than on Twitter (just needed to get these pics in here as I’m not on Twitter or Instagram).

You’re probably wondering what my problem is, why not just stay away from Twitter. Easier said than done. I don’t  follow anyone on Twitter – but my newspaper does, my favourite talk show hosts do, the TV news tell me what’s new on Twitter, my friends refer to my goddaughters’ tweets (which I don’t follow), the list goes on. In fact, I’m so tweeted up, I feel ready to burst.

I am often reminded of an interview that Finland’s former Minister of Culture, Claes Andersson, gave after writing a book about his 12 years as a politician. Andersson was a man of many talents: psychiatrist, author, poet, jazz musician and long time member of the Finnish Parliament. In the interview, he described how publicity feeds our need for attention and narcissism. Even psychiatrists succumb to it. Suddenly, you find yourself following the news like an addict, he explained. You see yourself coming and going in limousines and think this is me, even though it’s just a role. In the end, it feels like you don’t exist anymore, if there is no mention of you in the news.

I realise this is the reason behind all this political tweeting. Many “I Tweet, Therefore I Am” articles have been written about the phenomena. It’s about affirmation, not about communication.

This brings me to my other topic of the day. I have never sought publicity. I don’t need that kind of affirmation. Despite this, I find myself indirectly in the limelight these days. Everyone wants to comment on my needs and rights now that I am about to join my partner in life in this mystical group called The Elderly. Well-meaning persons from different institutions seem to know a lot about The Elderly. They worry about how we are coping.

I watched a TV show about The Elderly and the coronavirus, and had a hard time deciding whether to laugh or cry. The participants talked as if they knew The Elderly well. One participant felt especially qualified to discuss The Elderly, because she represented a small municipality with under 20000 inhabitants that had reached out by phone to all its senior citizens once or twice within the last 8 weeks. Based on a few random quotes from these calls, she felt free to draw the conclusions she wanted to draw regarding how The Elderly are coping with the coronavirus crisis.

With the same approach, you could call up all the brown-eyed people in said municipality, and quote a few of them at random as if they were representative of the whole group. It could lead to some tweet-worthy news regarding the thoughts and feelings of brown-eyed people in Finland.

Having scoured through my daily dose of international newspapers, financial market analyses and other news sources, and reviewed financial reports of the entities I still take an active role in as well as a few hiring contracts and some other legal stuff, I found myself amazed at the speed by which I was marginalised by these nice ladies and the gentleman, who joined them on TV to explain how much worse my immune system was getting day by day. They talked about me as if they knew that I can’t function without their kind guidance. They just wanted my best.

Until that moment I had felt on the top of my stairs.

Suddenly,  well-meaning officials were pushing me down. In the slightly modified words of the great Roberta Flack: They were killing me  – or at least my self-respect – softly with their words.

They don’t know me at all, but they have been oh-so-busy creating a public image of me. Soon I will turn into The Elderly. The ones that everyone cares enough about to tell them to stay at home and be careful, while the rest of the world continues on its productive way: mouthing (sym)pathetic platitudes about The Elderly on TV-programs.

Ageism has always been an issue in Finland, but never before has it been fed as actively as during the coronavirus crisis.

If Claes Andersson is right, I will eventually start to believe that my public persona – the one created by courtesy of the Finnish government – is me. Whether I do or don’t, everyone else will.

I might just as well curl up and stop fooling myself. Nothing, not even a Twitter account, can save me. My role has been cut out for me so publicly and decisively. Soon I will not be me. I will be an Elderly Person.

Finland needs me to stay out of contact.