Letter from the Editor 10.16.2019

I probably need to get off Twitter. I tweet maybe three times a week, but the lurking is a full–time job. I monitor culture, what people at the places where I’ve interned are up to, what people on P*nn Twitter are talking about. 

I have entire imagined relationships with people that I’ve never met just because I keep up with their lives online. I’ve never been an Instagram person—Twitter gives me the information rush I need and, on some level, makes me feel in on the joke.

And I can justify the obsession to myself, easily. I do it every day when I open up Twitter in lecture or scroll through it on my walk to the office. I need to know what’s going on at all times, or at least I feel like I do. Job applications for journalism ask me to list my handle. I follow editors and can see what pitches they’re looking for, or if there’s a new job posting. It’s a weird conflating of personal and public, private and professional. And I just can’t quit it. 

One part of Twitter that always makes me laugh is interacting with my mom. I joke that my mother is my Twitter “reply guy.” Anytime I tweet, well, anything, I can expect a response in record time. 

When I reviewed The Politician for Street last week, she posted that she liked the review but wished I spent more time studying and less time on Netflix. Which is fair. When I post a Letter from the Editor, she’s always the first to comment on it. She’s actually often the only person to comment on it, and often via Twitter.

I love Twitter—I love seeing the conversation, sharing memes around Succession episodes, saving articles to read later or to recommend for the “Stories We Wish We Wrote” section of Street’s newsletter, The Toast, which you should be subscribing to if you aren’t already. 

I should be more intentional about how I use it, but, hey, college is stressful and this stupid social media brings me a perverse amount of joy. 

So, anyway, follow me. @annabelle_g_w.