RYSON CASUPANG
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Twitter has recently become a staple of an app for American culture. People from various backgrounds are on there. Take myself for example, a 17 year old teenager, on the same social media platform as political figures such as Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and even the Pope. We all congregate on twitter to either find political views, comedy, or anything relatable to the user. That’s the whole shabang about twitter... the relatability. We find ourselves on twitter to realize that we are not alone in the world- that we are not the only ones who think a certain way. We, Americans, just love to feel like we fit in. We’ll make a video go viral for one week and never view it again, but the next week we’ll overplay a certain song and never listen to it again, and finally, we’ll rave about a netflix series for weeks until the season is over and no one will ever talk about it again.
It’s become very familiar for teens to hear their friends exclaim how stressed out they are; but, because they are so familiar with it, stress is almost a part of culture now. Friends won’t even bother to ask what’s wrong anymore; rather, they’d say something along the lines of “Okay, and?” or “Suck it up!” Next thing you know, you find yourself crying yourself to sleep and most importantly, on twitter. On twitter, you’re able to send out a simple tweet of “Stress sucks”, and by morning, your phone is blowing up with thousands of people liking and retweeting your tweet. But remember, people go to twitter to find relatability. The only reason so many people would like and retweet the tweet is if they, themselves can relate.
We all want to believe that we are strong individuals. In real life we’d rather conceal all the “bad” in our lives just to display strength; however, right when we arrive on twitter, boom, we reveal our true feelings. I didn’t know that hiding behind the screen of a handheld device was perceived as strength.