As I sit on the couch at my best friend’s apartment tonight, watching the demise of my family’s beloved Packers, (I’m a Browns fan) I noticed that I couldn’t put my phone down. Every 2 minutes I kept picking up my “black box,” pulling down the page to refresh. Forget facebook, that was so last year. I had to see what everyone was saying on Twitter. About the game. About life. About the weather. Anything. As my homework loomed and I thought back to the readings for class, I had to ask myself, “Jake, what are you doing?”
Twitter is a party. It’s a virtual/cyber room where every friend you know, every celebrity you want to know, and every athlete you look up to sits in the same place and talks to each other. Some people take to the corner of the room and only correspond with the few people they’re comfortable with, others try to gain the attention of @KimKardashian; there’s always that one follower that just observes and never talks (my mom), and we can’t forget the #personwhoyoucantstandbecausetheydontknowwhattheyredoing. The party never ends! Twitter is a streaming, changing, window into the world of the people that we now know way too much about.
Everyone’s favorite subject in life is themselves. Each person’s story is their masterpiece. Along with this obvious but quickly denied idea, people love to stick their noses in everyone else’s business. Starting to sound a little bit like a party? You walk in having to listen to one person talk about how they did this amazing thing. You get annoyed at that but find yourself rambling on about your dog and and how hard school is. When you catch yourself, you can’t help but eavesdrop at who your two former best friends are going on about. Starting to sound a little like Twitter?
Twitter gives us the ability to talk about ourselves. Listen to what our friends have to say. Listen to what people are saying, while they don’t know we’re listening. Twitter lets us laugh, explore, judge, connect, and express. All in 140 characters or less. While many people spend lots of time dogging Social Networking and how it is changing our world, it’s probably a lot more fun to just join the party.
I enjoyed the beginning of your blog post because I am a HUGE packers fan and I was tweeting during that game like no other! I agree with you in saying that Twitter enables us to talk about our feelings. I think it is such a great idea because it generates conversation among many individuals which you may or may not know. It is an opportunity to express yourself and agree or disagree with peers, friends, celebrities, stations etc. I also like how you said, that instead of people dogging social networking they should just join the party. I definitely agree since I use to be a person who hated social networking. Now I don’t know what I would do without it and I am loving #twitter.