Recently I discovered something about Twitter that took me by surprise. It isn't that my tweets can be found all over the internet, I realized that a few months back--hence my infrequent activity on there lately. No, this discovery is even more unsettling. At least, for me, anyway.
What would you do if you found out every single comment you've made on Twitter (not including DM's) is going to be gathered and archived, available for public consumption within six months of your hitting the send button. Your cute little blurb about what you're eating for dinner tonight and how you hope the neighbors don't set off their annoying car alarm at 3 in the morning, will be preserved till the end of time. Remaining intact and glossy, long after we're all dead and buried.
Would you think twice before sending out random crap with your name stamped all over it? I know I do! Who's going to see this stuff? My kids? My grandkids? What will they think of my views on today's fashion and the latest great novel. Worse yet, how would they view me if I were to say something rotten about another writer or family member? (Not that I ever, ever would!) Or anyone, for that matter. Does it make any difference?
I suppose it only counts if you care about the footprint you leave behind. No, not the carbon kind, I'm referring to the one that reflects you and who you are as a person. Your contributions, your salt, if you will. What are you made of?
The fact that Twitter has donated the entire archive of public tweets to The Library of Congress has me quaking in my boots. There's this new pressure to make every tweet meaningful. Wait, no, every tweet must be profound! Earth shattering! My ancestors will look back and think, by George, that girl was the very definition of genius! See the great stock we come from? Pffttt.....Since last year, our tweets have been harvested for preservation and research by the Library of Congress. So not only are they safeguarding all our coy 140 letter bites, they are using them for studies. And why, you may ask, my brilliant minded readers. Well, because we're making history, of course. Honestly, I can't fault the logic here. Think of all the chatter that came about after Senator Wieners embarrassing escapades were uncovered (pun intended). Oh, can you imagine how he feels knowing that scandalous mis-tweet is now part and parcel with billions of tweets, including, Brittany Spears updates and Obama plugs. Oh, hold on, I forgot, he deleted it, right? But is it really gone? Or is it sitting embedded somewhere in cyber space, waiting to upload to the Library of Congress for the world to see? I really can't speak on that, I don't know. (I'll have to do some investigating.)
And what about the tweets surrounding Osama bin Laden's death, and what about the upcoming presidential election. This is history in action. Pretty exciting, important stuff, huh! So, I suppose the moral of my post today is this: when putting yourself out there for the world to see, think twice, and then once more before hitting send--don't get caught with your pants down!
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