I remember making my first twitter back in 2011 and hiding it from my parents. I wanted a place where I could get all of my teenage angst out through cryptic haikus and 139 characters of unbottling my rage. I also wanted it because as an Aquarius sun and moon I don't like being in drama, but the best celebrity beef has always taken place on Twitter and I love my tea piping hot.
Twitter's simple and sleek posting feature allows users a variety of options short form to be easily digestible by its viewers. The idea of a character limit is appealing because there are no three minute reads unless someone creates a thread off of the original tweet but you get to choose if you want to see more or keep scrolling. You can add media like links, photos, videos and gifs which can tell more of a story than just a character limit to abide by. You can also outfit your posts with interactive polls that followers can take and give their opinions on. In this sense Twitter was always far ahead of Facebook and Instagram to me. You can show you agree or support a tweet by hitting the favorite button and leaving a heart or retweet a post and add your own character restricted message to it.
The good mustn't overshadow the bad that comes along with such strict technical posting criteria. For one, the character limit may leave you scrabbling to find the correct words to you so you can get your entire message across in just a single tweet. It can also be very confusing for first time users who are unaware of some of the limitations they may encounter when posting to the platform. You also don't get the option to dislike tweets so unless you plan to mention the user in a separate tweet or retweet with your own opinion, you don't have many options for quickly and passively showing your discontent. Another downside to Twitter is that sometimes the platform will pick key words or hashtags out of your tweets and shadow ban you because it may go against the platforms own beliefs or main stream media views.
All in all I particularly enjoy Twitter as a platform of creative expression that allow for smaller more wholesome bites of information. I think it has become a powerful tool for networking and communication and will be used for many generations to come. Just make sure you don't think too long or you may exceed your limit.
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