PB1A:

 Convincing People to Like You in 140 Characters or less

Twitter has become a media sensation that has recently branched out to a much larger personelle, particularly young adults, teens, and celebrities and political figures, within the last five years. Other social media networks are just as popular, like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat for example, but they all have more restrictive qualities: Facebook posts are likely to be seen by relatives since it is more popular with older generations, Instagram requires posting a photo in order to express words, and a Snapchat story lasts 24 hours with a word capacity even less than Twitter’s. The ability to quickly express one’s feelings to a more relatable audience and keep up with celebrities’ daily activities has caused its global rise in popularity.

A tweet in itself is such a specific genre, but there are underlying subgenres that determine the purpose, the context, and the tone. The subtweet is a tweet made regarding a follower on twitter with the intention of that person seeing it. A subtweet usually has a negative connotation; most of the time it is made out of anger or disrespect. One might subtweet about how a friend betrayed her, or the fact that one of her followers “gets around”. The name of the “victim” is never displayed, but the typer knows that the recipient will get the message once he/she sees it. In other words, a subtweet is basically an immature tactic for starting conflicts. The intended audience is one, unfortunate or possibly deserving person, and the purpose is not to exploit this person’s actions but to provoke a desired reaction out of him/her.

A similar subgenre is the ornery “life-lesson” style. This kind of tweet is usually made on a bad day, when someone is going through a rough patch, either long- or short-term. Sometimes one has just had an Epiphone, a realization about life. Other times it is just a result of deep reflection of a certain experience. Not all “life-lesson” tweets are negative. Some are motivating, encouraging its readers to work harder in school, work, or relationships in order to meet goals and find happiness. Others are warnings, telling one’s readers not to fall in love or not to trust people because they will always let you down in the end. Essentially a life-lesson tweet is not really offering advice to other people but actually a subconscious reminder to the maker himself. These tweets are usually longer than other subgenres and more descriptive.

Arguably the most widely-used style is the funny tweet. These tweets are the most simple and usually short in length. People make these tweets just to get a laugh out of people and increase their chances of getting likes. Many involve severe sarcasm, as sarcastic humor has become a huge trend in recent years. They also usually have something to do with the writer himself; it might tell of a funny event that happened to him today or a humorous observation he has made. Unfortunately, younger-generation humor has become politically or sexually offensive to many people, but the inappropriateness is supposedly why it’s funny. Either way, most funny tweets are light-hearted with no intention of deliberately hurting anyone’s feelings but simply to make the writer more likeable.

The last subgenre is the purely promotional tweet, which is mainly used by celebrities—up-and coming or already established—and important political figures. Often times artists will tweet about their recently released albums and presidential candidates will promote their campaigns. This tweet style is mostly informational, with some possible emotional aspects to increase the fanbase.

As diverse as these tweet styles may be, they all have the same basic underlying features and limitations. Most tweets of all styles make use of the hashtag, which was originally made to connect people interested in certain current trends but is too often abused and overused. All tweets use pathos to captivate its followers, whether it encourages anger, laughter, or happiness. One hundred percent of people’s tweets are just highly edited versions of themselves. People try to seem cooler, funnier, wiser than they actually are so they can seem more likeable or to increase their follower fanbase. Essentially, all tweets face the same constraints. Every thought that one wants to jot down must be expressed in 140 characters or less, which usually leads to a much more edited, controlled thought than the one that emerged in his/her mind. But the biggest limitation is the peer pressure imposed by one’s audience. The main intention behind a tweet is to get likes, so the writer will be motivated to write something that appeals to his/her readers and to avoid a subject that is publicly frowned upon. A tweet is only a fraction of one’s thoughts.