Facebook's Little Sister: Twitter

Sara Ridenour, in her chapter entitled "Facebook's little sister, Twitter.", elaborates on several different facets of Twitter that, in her point of view, lead to the development of greater tolerance and empathy towards each other amongst its users. She explains that Twitter users are not that concerned about the information they share on the website being public as they are aware that every other user's information is also available which leads to their expectance of more tolerance. I only partially agree with this idea because Twitter provides tweeters with the choice to either accept what other users are sharing or to completely ignore their ideas by un-following them or even blocking them. This option actually promotes intolerance as people
are encouraged to simply reject what seems to be unacceptable for them. This ignorance almost makes it impossible for people to emphasize with one another as they don't even care about what other's have to say. Twitter introduced the term 'followers' to be used for individuals that 'friend' other users and Tweeters are now given popularity based on how many followers they have. This fact itself is enough to express how Twitter encourages narcissism and self-surveillance in the lives of both celebrity users and ordinary users. The thought of someone reading your tweets and forming a conception about who you are is what leads to you practicing self-surveillance as you don't want to be viewed as someone you're not based on a single post on your Twitter account. Although I do agree with most of Sara Ridenour's ideas, I also feel like she fails to realize some of the implications that a social networking website such as Twitter has on the lives of its users.