A few minutes ago I was scrolling through my Twitter feed (as I often do while I am procrastinating *ahem* doing research).
I saw that one of the people I follow had tweeted, “Ah, crap” and then posted a picture. Needless to say, I was intrigued, so I clicked on it. What I proceeded to view were the worst 8 letters you could possibly be left with in a game of Scrabble – lots of Es, Is and even an X!
Now, you may be wondering – why I am sharing this with you? I’m doing so because I feel like this woman has given me the best, most succinct way to describe what is going on with social media and sharing. Who of us hasn’t been left with the worst letters in a Scrabble game (or been dealt *bad cards* in the literal or figurative sense)? And yet, would we ever have thought to share this fact with at least 1,857 other people at once (yes, that is the number of her followers)? But this is where we are – the technology exists for us to mass communicate our shared experiences (that we might never have consciously thought of as shared) and actually share them with others in real-time.
This woman’s tweet somehow spoke volumes to me about the complex concept of shared experiences and actual sharing, and how we make choices about how we represent ourselves and our lives to others – those we know personally and those we don’t.
How do you make decisions about what you share with others – online and off?