To top
9 Jan

Why We Tweet When We Tweet When Tweeting Seems An Odd Thing To Do

Last week, someone in our community lost her home in a fire. She tweeted about it, and the community rallied (not least because of this dear woman), and although there’s no real happy ending when someone loses so much, it seemed, at least, that one could keep faith with humanity as caring and good. But then – almost immediately – and inevitably – the criticisms came. Why was she was tweeting? Why should someone so irresponsible be supported by the community? Why should the community support anyone they don’t know? What is this ‘community’ thing that everyone is talking about, anyway, because, seriously, how could anyone think that the Internet has communities? There is, after all, no there there.

I’m not going to speak to the question of community support – I have about eleventeen thousand words to say about that, that I’ll save for another time – but I can speak – have spoken to – the question of why we tweet in those moments that seem to defy tweeting – why, indeed, tweeting during those moments tells us something about the very nature of tweeting, and of social sharing generally. Those words, repurposed, are below.

When I received the call telling me that my father had died, I cried. I cried loud, I cried hard, I fell to the ground and clutched at my aching chest and I wailed. And then, curled up on the floor, phone in hand, I tweeted.

30 Sep

I Am Mommy Blogger, Hear Me Roar

20100910-PMN-Proudfoot-Vanier0020.JPG

The post that follows is a revised version of a post that I wrote last year. I had been considering writing a new piece about the term ‘mommy blogger’ and to what extent I see that as part of my identity, not least because Kyle and I have been having conversations – partly in jest, partly not – about him becoming a dad blogger when we complete our move to New York and he becomes, for the most part, a stay at home dad, and those conversations raised the question: why ‘dad blogger’ and not ‘daddy blogger’? And why not ‘parent blogger,’ or some other neutral term?

I haven’t sorted out my thoughts on the daddy-blogger question – stay tuned – but reflecting on that question brought me back to this post, which still stands as a pretty accurate statement of my feelings on the term ‘mommy blogger.’

Dear Internet: I am not a mommy blogger.

Yeah, I know. There’s a baby in my header. There are lots of pictures of my children here, including that one, right there, on the upper left-hand side of this post. (Aren’t they cute? I let them call me Mommy.) But still. I am not a mommy blogger.