Tweeterers

Unfortunately, I haven't made it too far in the Palmer book (since mine JUST came in the mail... Sigh...) but something I've been thinking about a lot from our conversation in class is the divide between our personal and professional lives as writers, especially when it comes to the sphere of social media. I'm slightly obsessed with Twitter, and the fact that Palmer has utilized it for direct conversations to find places to sleep has made me think about its role in the space of a writer.

J.K. Rowling has made her presence known on Twitter; she tweets about Scottish politics and sports, replies to Harry Potter questions from fans, and fights the trolls on a regular basis. She has blurred the lines between a professional writer, a social media maven, and a social justice warrior, and she has completely let her wall between "personal" and "professional" down. Perhaps she has this privilege because she's reached an immortal status, but then again, maybe she's just made a name for herself and is blazing a trail for words to blend like watercolor paints, continuing work we do as writers into work we do as tweeters.

My Twitter is a conglomeration, including a multitude of "weird tweets," i.e. offbeat humor that I can't even begin to describe. My tweets also include complaints about school, conversations with friends using excessive hashtags, and the occasional social justice tweet that has gone viral. I like to think that my Twitter account reflects me, but a lot of the time, it does so through the tweets of others; their jokes and ideas align with mine, and I like to think that, through them, a fuller picture of myself shines through. That raises the question of mediation for me. Whether the website of Twitter or simply a tweet that you didn't write, does that mediation get in the way of our "transparency?"

Although Palmer heavily emphasizes trusting her followers and how much it pays off for her, she still speaks of a sense of uneasiness when meeting her hosts for the first time. I think that undermines the idea of complete transparency on social media; although her vulnerability is at an all time high in trusting her lives with these people, she still doesn't have a sense of who they really are before they meet, and the same goes for them. That could be due to the mediation of conversation through an online forum; everyone shapes a sense of themselves online, and even pictures and real-time conversations can't add up to the sense you get from meeting someone in person. While I think Palmer is brave and I admire her vulnerability, I don't think it's fair for her to skim over that idea of terror for the sake of arguing that she truly knows her followers. I think that online, you can only go so far.