I finally joined Twitter – and Threads – to see what all the fuss was about

... and discovered a hall of mirrors. Can the 70 million who signed up in two days last week to Mark Zuckerberg's new social media have got it wrong?

It's a truth universally acknowledged that there is the real world, with all its sprawling ambiguity and apathy, and then there is Twitter, where absolute certainty and tribal division reign supreme. And it's a further truth, almost as widely accepted, that if you want to be an opinion-former, wield influence and make an impact, you had better not spend too much time in the real world.

Yet for the past 17 years that is where I've chosen to remain. A journalist without Twitter is a bit like an exhibitionist who's agoraphobic - how are you going to be seen? And what chance do you have of generating that digital meteorological phenomenon of which we all, individuals and businesses, walk in awed terror: the Twitterstorm?