Twitterville is my favorite social media hood. Anything goes on Twitter - from the conversational to politics to breaking news to tumbling governments. And it's awake and lively 24/7. A happening kind of place.
I probably send out 5-10 tweets a day into the Twitterverse from @dancingdiva. Most of my tweets are a bit inane, sometimes funny, bits of "news" from a day in my life, or idle chit-chat with my tweeps. Nothing newsworthy, or so I thought.
Never once did I imagine that one of those little random tweets would translate into a story about reactions to rising gas prices featured "A1-above-the-fold" in the April 12 Star Tribune (and on the home page of its online edition). And that the story lede would jump off with, well, me:
Ann Freeman was filling up her Pontiac Vibe, watching the numbers on the pump spin so fast they blurred, when she noticed something she'd never seen before.
"I had never broken 40 bucks on gas before," she said, muttering to herself: "This is ridiculous."
She went home, got out her bicycle and took it in for a tuneup.
"My knees aren't what they used to be," Freeman, 54, said Monday afternoon. "But thanks to higher gas prices, I am motivated to drive less, ride more, save money and consume less..."
The rest of the story can be found here. (My favorite part is the guy who changed his match.com radius from 50 to 25 miles. What if his yet-to-be-found soul mate lives 35 miles away?!)
Here's the Twitter-tale:
The original tweet (from my phone, in my car, at the gas station)
The re-tweet or RT
The "ask" by a reporter looking for angles for his story
The result: From tweet to headline news
So what's your guess? Will today's random tweet become tomorrow's news?
Jamie Foxx's Michael Jackson tribute -- "Beat It" on BET Awards (video at bottom of post)
One of the things I love about Twitter is following other people's live tweets during programs I am watching on TV. It's one big conversation happening out there and good entertainment for comments on all kinds of things going on. Twitter has also become the best source for news, especially if you are following media folks and regular folk all commenting on the same stuff.
So on Sunday night, I tuned into Twitter as I tuned into the BET Awards, which promised to be a tribute to Michael Jackson. It was fun to watch and tweet. I weighed in on the good, the bad, and the ugly of the evening -- along with others I follow. I used #BET Awards (hastags allow you to follow others tweeting on a topic) to check in on what folks all across Twitterville had to say. I was pretty excited to see SO many African American folks tweeting and weighing in, and that the performers and the show itself were all trending for the night.
But the next morning, as I reviewed my BET tweets, I had a bad feeling in my stomach. While I hadn't said anything super negative about the show or performances, I had taken a few shots. Once again, as a white person who lives in a brown family, I found myself on that nebulous bridge between black and white. Taken out of the context of my life, my tweets as a whitegirl seemed out of school and borderline offensive. Examples: "My daughter and I are texting each other about the BET Awards. Jamie Foxx is acting stupid drunk." Or, "Keith Sweat is definitely not old school and he's not that good, either."
So I took them all down.
It reminded me of how different it feels to watch a Tyler Perry movie, for example, in a theater full of white people vs a theater full of black folks. The jokes FEEL different. Watching with a white audience feels like white people laughing at black people, stereotypes reinforcing their (our) misguided reality, etc. When it's black folks, it feels like people having a good time laughing together, getting the jokes on a whole different level, good fun.
And there's this: The morning after the awards, @humanitycritic, who I follow on Twitter and is funny as hell with a razor sharp mind, posted this: "I'm now convinced that this Boondocks portrayal of BET is close to reality - http://tinyurl.com/9adckx"
The clip is hilarious and captures the ongoing debate among some black folks about whether BET sucks or not. I love love the Boondocks, and I agree with the complaints about BET, but I didn't pass the clip along. Why? Watch it. First through the lens of a black person, then through the lens of a white person. My point exactly. Not my place to make the joke.
Back to Twitter and the BET Awards. After I had taken my tweets down, I learned that the BET trending topics on Twitter had spawned some very ugly, racist tweets by white folks offended that black folks were "invading" Twitter and worse.
To get a really good sense of what happened, read these two great posts:
Needless to say, while my tweets were not racist, I am so glad I listened to my gut and deleted them. My opinions were valid, and mine, but on a public feed on Twitter, they were part of an ugly, slippery slope. And the last thing I ever want to do is fuel that fire.
