#200: The Twitter Profile
Finding a friend and a home in Twitter
This, you may notice, is our 200th post, which might make it odd that I have chosen an object as little like our usual physical objects as my Twitter profile. But as with all celebrations, we like a surprise, so for our 200th blog post we are surprising you with our brand new Object Twitter account. More on this later.
For first I would like to self-centredly discuss my object of choice: my own Twitter profile, the space I would most likely call my internet home. I have written many blog posts about the concept of home; about both my flat itself and the objects inside. Concepts of home are something I think about a lot, as I become more settled in my first independent home. The problem with this tangible home — my flat and its contents — is that it is only part of the story.
I spend a lot of time interacting with the physical objects that make up my home: I cook in my kitchen, wash in the shower, sit on the sofa, store food in the cupboards etc. The only tangible things I do not frequently interact with at home — things that are incredibly important to a feeling of homeliness — are real life human beings.
I live alone. And in this way, the physical space of my home is not performing in the way that traditionally it might. Traditionally a home also implies family; it implies people inhabiting that physical structure and making it worthy of the name ‘home’. My flat does not fulfill this purpose.
That is okay. I am a solid Myers-Briggs-confirmed introvert. But I do happen to also like people. And I also happen to have a lot of random thoughts and observations in my head; the kind of titbits you save for conversations over food or cups of tea: ‘I saw this cool article about this thing’, or ‘The funniest thing happened at work today…’. Living alone, however, I spend my meal times in the company of the Gilmore Girls and these witticisms find no outlet.
Until I rediscovered Twitter.
Like housemates or family, Twitter is always there. Instead of bumping into someone in the kitchen, I bump into them on my feed. There’s always someone ready to receive my ramblings. A quick analysis of my Twitter profile and you will see that more than self-promotion, activism, interacting with celebrities, or the many other possible purposes of the platform, I use it to tell people about the most casual of occurrences: the excessive packaging my sax reeds were delivered in, my delight at a new diary, a strange dream, an encounter with a moth… While my Instagram captures the more picturesque moments in my life, Twitter is my everyday.
Even writing that sentence I cringe a little at myself; I recoil at the implied dependence on social media. Am I a millenial fool for replacing tangible interactions with those online? Am I losing something by incorporating this intangible presence into my physical home? Should I really be on SpareRoom trying to find myself some companions?
I don’t think so. Social media, when used critically, is an enhancement of the tangible world. My Twitter profile is an online object that I use alongside physical objects. I still invite friends to come chat on my sofa as well as on my Twitter feed. A combination of both is what allows my flat to become a home in the traditional sense, to still contain companions even if you cannot always see them.
The NEW Object Twitter Account
I promised more on our new Object Twitter account, so here’s a little message from Katie with all you need to know:
After Eleanor’s post above, don’t you want to join us in the virtual Twitter community? Just click here (or search @ObjectBlog) to follow us as we share our not-so-virtual objects, and more beyond. Objects are everywhere and we want to hunt them down and share them with you, so give us a follow and join us on our Object adventure — we’re starting to grow a little Object community, and we want you to be a part of it.
Eleanor is a writer using her skills in overthinking to write a weekly blog post about everyday objects, a collaboration with Katie, who also writes a weekly blog post about random objects that she finds in her everyday life. If you’re interested in reading more, check out their blog Object, and sign up for the monthly newsletter below.
