Around the start of this semester, I came across one of the leaked Sony emails where two executives at the media conglomerate mentioned how Kevin Hart was paid two million dollars for tweeting a promotional blurb about a movie. This revelation was not unexpected: tweets are very malleable and utilizing the medium and a celebrity’s fame for advertising is very common. But all the same it sideswiped me; I like to call this type of reaction “insurprised.”
One of the things that I appreciate most about Twitter is that there doesn’t seem to be as strong of an impetus to posture one’s self favorably, in comparison to other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or SnapChat. Twitter encourages stream of consciousness, which leads to heavy tweet volume, which leads to tweets having a very low baseline of importance, in general. I have found that it’s best to never place too much emphasis on any one social media post because they’re all inherently ephemeral by virtue of being on the Internet, even if they are saved to physical storage somewhere in the world. And I believe Twitter is at a very high level of ephemerality and disposability for its designated medium, the 140 character blurb. The number of unimportant, unnoticed tweets in the world must be staggering. However, seeing that one tweet could be worth millions made me stop and think to myself that I need to reexamine the methods I use to value a tweet, and by extension, any instance of social media. Luckily enough, I was developing the right frame of mind, through this class, to take on such a task.
It stands to reason that some form of effort was required in the drafting of any online post, whether it was the effort to come up with a few nice sounding sentences or the effort to automate the writing process with a computer program. With that in mind, there really is no such thing as a completely negligible social media update. There’s a myriad of factual extrapolations to be made for any given post, including but not limited to, its overall context, its purpose, and its positioning in respect to the intended audience. Ultimately, a tweet is only what the virtual audience makes it to be. I’m most reassured while using Twitter when an average user’s poignant, timely tweet makes the rounds and reaches hundreds of thousands of views. This type of occurrence reaffirms to me the egalitarian Internet that I have come to know.
The “perfect storm” tweet above contrasts sharply with the alleged paid tweet of Kevin Hart’s. The former achieved its worth by keeping a steady hand over the heartbeat of society. The latter simply had money thrown at it. Though I am nowhere near as critical of capitalism as others may be, it’s this type of monetary hot air that I believe is incredibly detrimental. What I believe is best, and I think this philosophy can be extended to many other fields, is to not force an issue, even if that issue is something as slight as a tweet..
