Connectivity

This week, after some intense pressure from one of my tutors, who basically implied no self respecting PR wannabe would dare otherwise, I have joined that popular interface Twitter. Yes, I am now officially a tweeter or a twit or whatever the terminology is. Late to the party and feeling wholly superficial, signing up to something I have no interest in for the sake of my burgeoning profession, I have tentatively begun my career as a microblogger, one of the millions spewing forth short bursts of inconsequential social commentary into the ether.

Like any good shameless self promoter I have begun stacking the list of feeds that I follow with the names of popular opinion leaders, high brow cultural institutions, intelligent writers, satirists and credible world news purveyors. Anything that makes me look just that little bit more in-tune than I actually am, or could ever hope to be with two small children. Am I really hip enough to know who the cultural editor of the New York Times is, let alone follow him on twitter? Probably not. But isn't that the point of these social media channels? They provide us with an opportunity to construct a representation of our best selves for the world to see and hopefully accept. Forget citizen journalism, we're all doing citizen PR and boy does it make us feel important!

So here I am tweeting, retweeting, liking, sharing, pinning, blogging, posting, following. But not only that, now I can blog about my tweets and tweet about my blog, pin my blog to my board and tweet about that, share my tweets with my friends then like them and blog about the fact that I've shared my tweets with my friends, I can even follow myself if I so desire. Blog and tweet and pin and share ad infinitum. I'm a veritable what's what of connectedness.

And in amongst this frenzy of online profile constructing my two-year-old sits on the floor screaming at me because his toast is too floppy. Oh the things that make toddlers cry. If I ever start taking my ideal social self too seriously my children will no doubt ensure I remain tethered firmly to reality. #whatamIdoinghere

For what it's worth I can be found @ameliafishstar