New Year’s Resolution

My New Year’s Resolution is to tweet more.

I know, I know, I know. Twitter is the worst. Like, soul-crushingly, dangerously the worst. No one knows that more than high profile women like Lauren Duca and Lindy West.

But we live in a world where ideas get suppressed, voices get quieted. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are threatened every day, and our incoming president doesn’t seem interested in protecting them. Speaking truthfully is going to become even more valuable than it already is, which is, of course, pretty damn valuable. We need to speak.

I’m not saying that my ideas are the most important thing out there. But they are important. Too often, I find myself questioning and overthinking: ‘Is it worth it to post? Someone else has probably already said it. I’ll probably sound stupid.’ Well, fuck that. It’s that thinking that silences people. There’s enough silencing happening from the outside, especially to young women; we don’t need to be adding to it internally.

On Twitter, there is a great patchwork of voices. It gets noisy. But it also offers the opportunity to spread ideas in positive ways. I’ve learned so much from the tweets in my timeline — I’ve been pointed in the direction of brilliant articles and new takes on issues I care about and underrepresented voices. I’ve also seen a lot of dumb stuff that just makes me laugh, and that levity is so important too. Twitter facilitates people banding together, through things like hashtag campaigns and other connections. Of course, that can be dangerous when used by hateful people, but the good guys also can and need to use it as an organizing tool for positive causes and issues that matter.

Twitter is also a great platform for spewing out ideas. If a loud, orange lump of a man can do it, then I can do it too. I want to share ideas that I think are important. I want to retweet smart people, especially WOC and queer voices. I want to let people hear my thoughts — the brilliant ones, the funny ones, the emotional ones… all of it messy, all of it true. I have things to say, and I will say them. I will express myselfTwitter is for quick and dirty ideas — I will spew them out so later I can clean them up and stitch them into gold.

I will voice my ideas more freely. I will be loud. I will never shut up.

This originally appeared in Pop Warrior, Issue №15 on January 19, 2017.

Pop Warrior is Sarah Halle Corey’s bi-weekly email newsletter about feminism, feelings, pop culture, and everything in between. Subscribe here.