Sometimes I envision my Twitter feed as rushing water: my presence is a dam, and each tweet is debris making its way downstream. It’s now a challenge to let information simply flow—to let tweets swim by without me seeing or interacting with them.
Tag Archives: social media
Filed Away: On Pinterest and Dreams
Sure, I was collecting things in an online space. But it still felt like clutter, fit for shoe boxes under my bed. And with Pinterest, my aspirations no longer floated in my head. They were right there: discoverable, pinnable, and recyclable by others. Aren’t my dreams supposed to be elusive? Unable to be bookmarked?
On Favorited Tweets and My Internet Limbo
But on Twitter, it’s different: favoriting is less about someone else and more about me. The process is about plucking the juicy bits from others’ minds and imaginations and tossing them into a cauldron—a volatile place that mirrors my headspace at any given moment.
Online Mourning and the Unexpected Refuge of Facebook
Alone, I sobbed. Yet I sobbed with Facebook open—his life revealed and exposed in bits on my screen, his friends spilling tears on his profile. I sobbed at home, by myself, but also with everyone else.
(Digital) Life After Death: A Perfectionist’s Postmortem Fears
And then I think about the public profiles that I have no qualms about leaving behind, and the aspects of my digital persona that would never change—the bits of data on my various profiles that my spirit would approve, long after I am gone.
On the Rave Underground and Pre-Digital Discovery
A boundaryless world where I participated and created, lost in moments mostly undocumented.
On Eternal Sunshine, Erasing Memories, and Facebook Timeline
But my curation of my own history—the deleting of previous status updates, the “featuring” of particular posts—is strange. More so than before, I am able to highlight what is important in my life—or what I want others to view as important—and fill in missing details from today to when I was born.
On Facebook Status Updates (And What I Could Have Said)
How would my Facebook updates read if I licked off the sugar coating?
Jarring & Juxtaposed: Digesting the Twitter Stream
For those of us who mingle virtually with avatars in the same room, and who embrace Twitter as meaningful and three-dimensional, I wonder: If one is not interested in Libya, or Wisconsin, or the Superbowl, or Egypt, or Planned Parenthood, or the Grammys, how do we whisper about something else? How do we tweet politely about our day when others are distraught, angry, or in need?