I Tweet Therefore I Am

When You tweet, do you tweet for yourself? Do you sit and think about what to tweet before tweeting it? Do you wonder what your followers would think of the tweets you post? In Peggy Orenstein article “I Tweet, Therefore I Am” she claims that people should tweet for themselves and not everyone else. When I say tweet for yourself I’m basically saying that you should tweet what you feel and not what anyone else wants you to tweet. Orenstein feel as if twitter has become a normal part of her life. She feels compelled to tweet and let people know about what’s going on in her life. Peggy Orenstein came to twitter a little late. She wasn’t used to all the social networking and things of that sort. The only reason she joined twitter was to promote

It was only a place to draw in people to connect with and become an opportunity for self-expression but, it became something more. With people being a social network so much came the idea of alienation. “The risk of the performance culture, of the packaged self is that is eroded the very relationships it purports to create and alienates us from our own humanity” (348). Even though it was a place to connect with people some people took it to the extreme. Twitter became the only place they would interact with people. They wouldn’t go out and meet people anymore. “When friends become fans what happens to intimacy?” (348). People stopped connecting with the people in reality and stayed just on social networks. They removed themselves from humanity and created an online life. This is what social media does to us. People tend to be larger than life on social media and for some people that was all they need. “Social media may have not instigated that trend but by encoring self-promotion over self-aware, they may well be accelerating it” (348). Social media made people want to promote themselves more. Instead of being are aware of the things going on in their lives they were too busy making things seem more than what it was just for a tweet. “Each twitter post seemed a tacit referendum on who I am or at least who I believe myself to be” (347). Although all of these things were going on through Orenstein’s time on twitter, nothing made her want to delete her account. She was already too addicted to leave it. Through this she realized that not everything needs to be shared on a social network. People just need to stop and enjoy life in the moment. Don’t sit around and think of a way to express yourself in a tweet. “It also means that next time I find myself lying on the grass, stringing daisy chains and listening to E.B. White I will resist the urge to trumpet about the swan”