I just recently started back up again on Twitter after taking an unintentional two year hiatus. I suppose I never really completely understood Twitter or at least I wasn’t really good at it. But about a month ago I decided, why not, I’ll try again. This time around I have gained a bit more of an understanding on the social expectations of Tweeting and Twitter as a whole.
For starters, I’ve learned that it is impossible to stay within the character limit. Like, 140 characters is not enough space for me to express my current thoughts. Maybe I just talk a lot, or it's the writing minor in me, but I cannot convey what I want to in 140 characters or less.
Another thing I’ve learned is that “subtweeting” is a huge thing on Twitter. For those of you who don’t know, subtweeting is when you are blatantly tweeting about a certain person without mentioning their name. An example I found is, “Can’t believe u did that. You know who u r.” Now let’s analyze this for a moment. First of all, if the person knows you’re talking about them, why not just say who it is? For one thing, that would make understanding this tweet much easier for the rest of us. What did they do? If they are so aware it’s them, why can’t we know too? It’s really hard for those of us who live for drama, especially when you’re dangling it in our faces. If you didn’t want everyone to know what was happening, why say something so vague at all? You know the replies to this tweet are just going to be people asking the same questions I just did.
Adding on to the subtweeting, people on Twitter must feel some sort of calling to be as vague as humanly possible. It’s like the people on Twitter want you to be aware something is happening or that they are mad about something, but they don’t tell you what it is. It’s very frustrating. Another example: “I just made the worst mistake of my life”. Now you know this is going to capture people’s attention. People are inherently curious beings, we can’t just let a statement like this go. If it is the “worst” mistake you’ve ever made, you have to tell us. Again, Twitter is all about teasing the real information. Which, personally, I think is just cruel. If you don’t want people to know what mistake you just made, don’t tell people you’ve made a huge mistake.
Tweeters can be split up into many different categories. There are the average daily tweeters who just tweet about their day and their personal events. There are the vague tweeters as mentioned before, as well as the subtweeters. However, Twitter definitely has a large amount of primarily comedic tweeters which I think is why Twitter is really such a gem. The people who are able to put such comedic brilliance into 140 characters are golden. They are the real reason I continue to go on this freaking app, they give me a little more light in my day. The final type of tweeters are the political tweeters. You might not have thought it was possible but there is another great social media political outlet than Facebook. Yes Facebook has a lot, but let me tell you, Twitter has more. So if you are sick of seeing multiple political posts on Facebook, you should probably steer clear of Twitter.
Now, overall, I think Twitter is great. But you have to know how to use it. If you don’t fit at least one of the categories I mentioned before, you’re probably lying to yourself. So while it’s hard to know all of the social Twitter norms at first, you definitely end up with more knowledge on the social expectations of Twitter than you ever thought you would know or ever thought you wanted to know.
