The first assignment of the year is over and we are now all competent on blog posting and tweeting. It would appear that most all students in English303-002 have written their responses and posts on the blog about the wonderful singularity that is Twitter. On the topic, many of the blog posts provided three critical ideas: the usage of twitter as a means of personal branding, the ability of twitter to serve as a critical utility, and a remarkable discussion of Orenstein’s I Tweet, Therefore I am.

As Sara Wise said in her post The Industry of Twitter, “Only a few years after its creation, here we are learning how to brand ourselves on Twitter and how that branding will take us further in life.”Much like celebrities can brand themselves; we are now able to brand ourselves. We create an online persona replete with the articles we post, the celebrities we follow, and the jokes we tell; all of which are now open for the world to see. Over the past few years, there have been privacy issues dealing with the Internet, specifically Facebook. Like it or not, you will be judged by your Facebook–and by your Twitter. Is this a fair measure of an individual’s worth, or is it simply a superficial appearance of what we represent?

Utility is the usefulness of twitter, that is: is twitter actually used as a meaningful tool or is it more a meaningless stream of cognitive thought? Does the world actually need to know what you had for breakfast? A few students discussed the pure stupidity of some posts on Twitter. One in particular, TMelone, noted, “I cannot tell you how mad I was when I read that Peggy Orenstein would want to separate herself from a moment with her daughter in order to tweet about it.” This describes the somewhat questionable utility of some Twitter posts and perhaps an underlying perception that Twitter separates us technologically rather than connects us socially.

Many of our classmates connected with Orenstein. The twitter-obsessed have had many moments where at one point they might have been able to enjoy simple moments in life but now realize the “perfect opportunity for a tweet,” as Orenstein says. As Zach Weed states in his post “We experience something and we immediately try to figure out a way to share this through Facebook or Twitter.” AAN’s simple title to their blog post sums it up well, Twitter Validation? These days it may seem that the thoughts and opinions we have are not validated until we get it ‘out there’ on the Internet.

It seemed as if the class is divided into two extremes—either you love it or you hate it. But we all seemed to agree, like it or not, for better or for worse, that twitter is changing us. It gives us a whole new perspective on the world and on ourselves. However, throughout the semester hopefully we can keep challenging our views on the positives and negatives of twitter and other social media.

-Jonathan Fluharty, Jessica Latham, Kelsey Oppenheimer