My Strange Relationship with The Bird App

280-Character Word Count

Twitter is an app that not many people understand. The app in itself is quite simple and straightforward; you type a sentence— anything at all— and tweet it out. Some find the 280-character word count rule to be extremely limiting and ridiculous. Others wonder what makes this app different from other social media platforms that also allow you to post sentences and photos, even without the limitations. A lot of people even try joining, signing up and designing a profile, only to eventually abandon it, deeming it “useless”.

For years, I used to be one of those people. It is quite blurry in my head as to how I ended up using twitter hours at a time on a daily basis. The process is unclear, but now, allotting time into thinking about the reason I am on that app all the time, I have surprisingly realized a lot, not only about the app but about myself too.

My Drastically Different Interests

Twitter, more than only having a target demographic that is based on age, gender, etc., targets the people who have something to say. This is why as a person who is known for oversharing, expressing every little thing that passes my brain no matter how controversial or weird, this app is perfect.

This can be seen with how I have 5 different twitter accounts, all fully active, each serving a different purpose and having tweets catered towards different groups of people regarding my drastically different interests.

Talking to The Void

Knowing this, one might expect me to be the type of person who is easily reachable online. That is most definitely not the case. Despite tweeting on a daily basis, most of my direct or personal messages are left unread with no response. Twitter, for me, is almost like a diary or a storage. It’s a platform for me to dump a bunch of (mostly half-baked) ideas to visit later on. It is almost similar to talking to myself, a wall, or the void. In fact, oftentimes when a person brings up a topic that I have tweeted about to me in person, I get surprised, reminded of the fact that I am most definitely not speaking to the void.

Another false assumption is that I am generally comfortable sharing my life online to a large number of people. This is false because most of my accounts are set on private, only having less than a hundred followers on purpose.

This is also the reason why I chose Twitter as opposed to other similar social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Those platforms, while also having different privacy options, are generally apps where people share things to a large number of people all the time. Most of the time this consists of my family members, teachers, schoolmates, acquaintances, and other people I generally am not the most comfortable with. With Twitter, it is much easier to regulate what type of people are really seeing your posts. 

The fact that I only want a small number of people viewing my posts might not entirely be a privacy issue, but it might have something to do with keeping the illusion that it is a private diary and I am talking to the void.

My Timeline

Despite all this, treating it as my virtual diary is not the only reason. Twitter is also an app for the most opinionated people. Twitter gives you the freedom to discuss different topics that are normally considered taboo, and everyone else in the platform is encouraged to think about it and give their own takes on it. 

It is a great app to not only share your own thoughts and spark up a conversation, but to also raise awareness towards certain issues. A lot of the things I know about politics has started from stumbling across a Twitter thread about it. Not everything is serious in the app either, it is a great place to join communities of people who share the same interests as you and talk amongst each other. It is an app filled with humor unmatched by any other social media platform.

The app is quite simple and the claim that others make saying that it is “limiting” is valid. Every person who leaves the app, deeming it “useless” is understandable. However, once you find the right community to join, the right subjects to talk about, and the right purpose for staying on the app, you will surely find it a joy.

.