Why I Love Twitter

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Hi, everyone! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share my thoughts on why I LOVE Twitter.

You may have already seen my video on why I quit Facebook. That was many years ago. But about a year ago, my husband started reading me funny things from his Twitter feed, so I decided to sign up and now I have a full-blown Twitter addiction. It's bad enough that I have to have self-imposed rules about when I can look at Twitter, for how long, and what things I need to have accomplished before I indulge myself.

THE BASICS
So, basically, I started by following a bunch of my favorite comedians. Then I added a bunch of authors whom I respect and whose opinions I value. From there, I basically decided that my favorite tweets were insightful commentary on current political news events and so I follow actors, directors, journalists, statisticians, activists, politicians, social media influencers, professors, etc. who are smart, interesting, well-read, funny, and politically interested and savvy. And of course, LOTS of comedians. I do not follow anyone that I know in real life -- with the exception of my husband's work account, which is obligatory. I follow basically everyone who I would have at the best fantasy world cocktail party.

I do not post much. I do not have practically any followers. I retweet stuff that I want to remember later. Twitter is not a monolith -- my Twitter feed looks different and reads different than anyone else's Twitter feed based entirely on who I follow. My husband's feed reads like this: Steelers, Steelers, Steelers, Steelers, News, Steelers, Steelers, etc. Black Twitter has a specific activist cultural identity that even has an entry on Wikipedia. Teens tend to follow their friends and do not send links to articles, whereas adults send a ton of links to articles with commentary. One of the things that I love is the huge variety of news sources that I now read based on Twitter link sharing. I enjoy the diversity of opinion, expert and otherwise, related to those articles.

Platform Personalities
I recently heard a Note To Self podcast interview with Derek Thompson, who writes for the Atlantic. I love the way he describes the different social media platforms and what would be considered the perfect entry or post on each platform:
• Facebook - Happy, optimistic, and slightly narcissistic
• Instagram - artsy, image oriented, like pictures of you with a sunset
• Snapchat - goofy, carefree, definitely no pictures of you with a sunset
• Twitter - ironic, slightly negative, sardonic, and snarky

Well, reading that -- it's no wonder I prefer Twitter! The conversations I prefer in real life match the Twitter personality. And believe me, I see the irony that my YouTube personality probably fits a little better in the Facebook world, but that might be a different post. Here's another tweet that describes it perfectly:



Hahahahahahahahaha! Twitter does tend to be a little negative and alarmist, but because it is part of a larger community, at least you feel like you have company as the country burns to the ground!

Here are some of my favorite things about Twitter: illustrated by some of my favorite Twitter moments.

HUMOR
There are way too many examples of this, but essentially, when you have a bunch of smart, hilarious people trying to come up with puns and witticisms about any event, you can pretty regularly hit comic gold. Here are some good ones just from the past couple of weeks:

On Scaramucci



One the firing of Reince Preibus:


I can't tell you how much fun it was to wake up that morning and watch the whole thing roll out real-time on Twitter. It was like the funniest guys at your office huddled around the water cooler riffing off the same theme. There were thousands of hilarious tweets. It was a giant inside joke for our nation. So fun. Thank you, President Trump . . .

[brg]

Here here! I started a twitter account ages ago to follow the health care reform debate by following lots of health care reporters. My follows have blossomed to many non-health related people, but my news is essentially curated by twitter. I subscribe to many periodicals and papers, but end up finding what I'm most interested because it was tweeted first. I'm an RN, and recently during this COVID crisis, what has been most comforting has been the medical follows. Many medical people have demented senses of humor, and it's easy to find on twitter.