# Reading Response 10
## Nov 29 Tues - Collapsed Context
### *Twitter & BeReal*

BeReal is definitely not *always* real. In my personal experience, I have not been ashamed to be ... fake .. on occasion. If a certain event is happening later that day that I have really been looking forward to -- I may be inclined to save it and wait to post it. This, however, disregards the entire point of being real. Is it really BeReal if they give you ways to BeFake?

As [Duffy and Gerrard](https://www.wired.com/story/bereal-doomed-online-authenticity/) wrote, "performativity-shaming is baked into the app's design" as it lets other users know when someone has posted a late BeReal. I believe the only way to actually have people genuinely *be real* is to not allow people to post late whatsoever. This will obviously anger some users -- but this would actually combat the performative nature of BeReal. It is interesting to also look at BeReal from a social networking perspective. BeReal affords users the opportunity to stay connected with friends and family, without actually requiring intentional interaction. How else was I going to naturally tell people I was packing parent tote bags for orientation on Friday, June 24th? 

[boyd](https://tiara.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Marwick_boyd_TweetHonestly.pdf) emphasized the different ways in which people use Twitter -- from spreading political information to connecting with friends on the platform to simply tweeting just to tweet. With all the recent changes to Twitter in 2022, I believe that Twitter continues to be used for different purposes. For example, some of my friends have recently really enjoyed getting into what they have called the "northeastern twitterverse". Here, they all have private twitter accounts and tweet their everyday thoughts. They respond to each other's tweets and have full conversations on the platform. The audience, therefore, is carefully coordinated as they do not allow random people to follow them. However, I do not know everybody that my friends know. Therefore, I am able to be an audience member to some tweets that I never intentionally got access to when my friends respond to other people I do not know. Does this make me a lurker? Does this make the other people my microcelebrities? I do not know to be honest! This communication between friends may have been what Twitter was intentionally designed for, but I have not seen any of my friends use Twitter like this since middle school. It is fascinating for this twitterverse to continue to gain momentum right as Elon Musk takes over Twitter -- so I am curious to see where it will go as Elon continues to make changes. Will my friends travel to a different platform? Will they stay on Twitter? I am not too sure -- but I love to follow along.

I could not help but see how clear it was that boyd's article was written in 2010. Some of it was obvious, like how [John Mayer](https://twitter.com/JohnMayer?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) happened to be the musician of choice when talking about how many followers he had (even though he has only gained about 100,000 followers in twelve years). Some of it was not so obvious, like how some aspects of Twitter's interface have changed in the decade since this has been written. This is not to fault boyd, however, as social media is everchanging. I would be curious to know more current research about the information in boyd's article. Twitter has certainly been in the headlines recently, and it would be fascinating to see this information be more up to date.