Quick! You have 140 characters to say the most profound thing you have ever said in your life. Go!
It's not so easy, is it? And yet at the same time as you and I struggle to tweet, more and more people are using Twitter in meaningful ways. I'm not saying that everything on the social media platform is profound or even noteworthy, but it is becoming increasingly prevalent in organizing people when compared with sites like Reddit and Tumblr. Our generation has spoken, carving out a space for ourselves in the world wide web.
When Twitter was founded back in 2006, I don't think anyone could have predicted where it would end up a decade later. It was basically just sending a text to the entire Internet...which is a little weird when you think about it. Who are you talking to? Should you expect an answer? Where is this site going? It took a few years to get answers, the first whispers of change arriving when everyone except your voicemail started calling this symbol “#” a hashtag. Now, it rivals the almighty Facebook for social networkers and procrastinators everywhere.
It's a major site for politicians. Let's be honest: older people will watch CNN or news or radio talk shows to see what's going on in the capitol. We, the kids of America and a few select cool adults, use social media. I don't need copies of some paper thrown at my door when I'm subscribed to four different ones on Facebook and have the New York Times app. I can get news as it happens at my fingertips and I'm not the only one in on the secret. When someone wants to be relevant, they tweet something which will be reported on Facebook and spread to places like Tumblr, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, etc. Congressional representatives, governors, and presidential hopefuls all tweet to reach their constituents. If a politician isn't tweeting (or even if they are), then they're on Facebook.
Bernie Sanders, who formerly ran for the Democratic nomination, became relevant due to his live-tweeting of the Republican debates. With Larry, the Bird behind him, the 74-year-old senator became incredibly popular among young Democrats everywhere. America's youth identified with a man old enough to be our great-grandfather thanks to Twitter. As people like Martin O'Malley or Mike Huckabee struggled to be seen in the early days of campaigning, Bernie and his "Bernie Bros" defied the odds.
As much as I hate to admit it, Trump also knows how to do this. He and his campaign managers tweet several times a day, making it likely they'll go viral. Most recently when people realized that Melania Trump, his third wife, and a keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention, had plagiarized a speech by First Lady Michelle Obama in 2008, Trump tweeted. Just below that is one of his slightly-less-recent tweets that originally featured the star of David ("just a six-pointed star", according to Trump) instead of a circle. Both have made headlines.
Good news is Melania's speech got more publicity than any in the history of politics especially if you believe that all press is good press!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2016
Crooked Hillary -- Makes History! #ImWithYou #AmericaFirst pic.twitter.com/PKQhYhMmIX
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2016
Countries even have official twitter accounts. On July 7th, the countries of Sweden and Denmark had a hilarious twitter fight. It started with Denmark retweeting Sweden's tweet and saying that both countries hate wall-to-wall carpeting. It escalated when Sweden replied by disrespecting Denmark's small size. By the end of it, a dead moose, drunk Swedes being mistaken for Danes, and a Swedish child named after the Danish Lego had been involved in the tweet storm. You can see the whole thing that went down here. Before that, Canada had it's most aggressive act since 1812 using Twitter to discuss the crisis in Russia and Ukraine back in 2014.
Geography can be tough. Here’s a guide for Russian soldiers who keep getting lost & ‘accidentally’ entering #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/RF3H4IXGSp
— Canada at NATO (@CanadaNATO) August 27, 2014
Yes, the country's most aggressive act since burning the White House of the U.S. was a passive-aggressive tweet. To be fair, the country has not started any wars - not even for independence from Britain like its southern neighbor. The overt politeness is a stereotype, but I think this one does have some factual basis. Violent crime and general crime rates in the country have been steadily declining since 1998 according to Statistics Canada. Twitter is their outlet for aggression.
On the more serious side, this iconic social networking site is a great place for social activism. While you can only post 140 characters, this does limit you from including memes, images, and links. Also, you can always write more than one tweet, linking them together by tweeting all at once, a "tweet storm" as they are sometimes called. Many hashtags are targeted at positive changes and social justice like #YesAllWomen and #FreetheNipple and so much more. As you might be able to tell, I'm a feminist. Twitter lets me communicate with other feminists, communists, nerds, or whoever I want with hashtags.
Coffee is most effective if consumed between 9:30 am and 11:30 am.
— What The F*** Facts (@WhatTheFFacts) July 22, 2016
25,000,000 of your cells died while you were reading this sentence.
— What The F*** Facts (@WhatTheFFacts) July 22, 2016
For fun, you can subscribe to interesting feeds like @WhatTheFFacts, which supplies you with many obscure factoids you can tell your friends. Billy Nye the Science Guy (@BillNye) and Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) bring some science humor and wisdom to the Twitter-verse. One user's tweets, @90syears, is a great way to reminisce about life before the internet was big. I can think of at least ten celebrity Twitter feuds to add a little drama. Without tweeting, we would also never seen the creation of Jimmy Kimmel's segment "Celebrities Read Mean Tweets" or Jimmy Fallon's "Hashtags". That would be a shame.
In the spirit of total honesty, I didn't really like Twitter when I first came across it. I thought it was going to be a bunch of pre-teens tweeting about their lives or celebrities complaining about being rich and famous. While I'm sure there are a few pre-teens on the platform and Kayne has some questionable tweets, I'm glad to say that they are only a very small minority. Most of us here are globally-minded people and (bonus) we don't rant like they do on Reddit.
So, whether you are part of the generation that grew up with web browsers or hip adult without a technological handicap, you can appreciate the wonder that is tweeting. #awesome
