Twitter saved my life

“It’s the greatest thing.”

So said my friend, sitting across from me at a window seat of the Wendy’s next to dirty Kroger grocery. He had finally made a Twitter account, only five or so years late to the party. But he’s right.

Our weary eyes pondered the myriad customers dragging themselves through the line to order spicy chicken nuggets and a double stack. The shuffling spectacles — some clad in Halloween costumes, others simply looking like they walked out of a horror movie — were begging to be published in 140 characters.

These people wouldn’t exist to our friends (or to us, really) unless we acknowledged their disheveled existence with a tweet or two. In just a few seconds, we can type out a textual portrait or a throwaway punch line.

The trivial and mundane becomes exactly what it is: important.

That’s the attraction. That’s the thrill. We’re making history with our words. It’s a history of moments, one that acknowledges the art of the everyday. We process whatever latent emotions are lurking around in our sleep-deprived minds and transform them into cryptic and unalterable text. It’s no small phenomenon.

At this point, it almost goes without saying, but the world we live in is a new kind of world. It’s a world where the line between public and private is less fixed than ever. A world where something we can’t hold is more real than something we can.

When we show photos to our grandchildren, we won’t be turning pages; we’ll be clicking a mouse. Our memories can be liked, shared and retweeted.

It’s a sort of bizarre actualization in which our waking lives are made tangible by their intangible existence online. Twitter represents the potential of this intangible era.Think about the social change that could result from so many individuals having a voice. There is a fear that so many voices will mean shouting into a void.

But what if we heard each other? New media, Twitter in particular, signals the gradual shift from individualism to collectivism. The hashtag is not the dismantling of unique thought it’s the bringing together of disparate thought.

We can use this absurd forum to organize, to start a revolution. Consciousness-raising becomes effortless and just as effective. We have the potential to unite on a huge scale. I doubt the Occupy movement could’ve happened, or kept itself going, without the utilization of new media.

I’ve heard plenty of people dismiss Twitter as a fad. I’ve heard it written off as cheap, inelegant self-service for teens and college students all too ready to abuse the English language. But it’s not some fleeting institution. Even if it were, it’s become so pervasive that it’s permanently altered our landscape.

The new landscape is one that demands our interactivity. Our participation promises the very real possibility of change. Once we realize how many of us there are and exactly how much we have in common, we can work to make this new world a better place.

The limitation of 140 characters is limitless. Isn’t it the greatest thing?

­— ptbeane@indiana.edu