“Twitters broke, my life has no meaning anymore.”
Those were the words of an unnamed tweeter who—in a spat of despondency—took to another, smaller social networking site to lament a temporary outage of Twitter last week. And she was far from the only person to treat the loss of service as, really the loss of all that’s good and beautiful in the world.
I think our good tweeter was likely joking. A little. I imagine that he or she gamely soldiered on for the couple of hours that Twitter was down, rekindling old interests and uncovering forgotten joys. (“Who knew the sun was so bright?”) But even if the post was made in jest, just suggesting Twitter might be such a central part of someone’s life would’ve struck me as a bit odd. A bit sad.
Or it would’ve struck me like that last week. But natural disasters have a way of changing your perspective.
On June 24, a wildfire roared to life near Colorado Springs, where Plugged In is headquartered. My fam and I saw the first plumes of smoke while making a Home Depot run around 12:30 p.m. and, by the time we got home, most of the local channels were switching to around-the-clock coverage. Neighborhoods were being evacuated and, by 4 p.m., we got word that our neck of the woods was under a “voluntary evacuation” notice—which I took to mean as a nice way of saying, “yeah, you should probably leave, but we’re not going to force the issue.”
So we did, spending the night a few miles farther away from the fire. Though I didn’t think our house was in any real danger (and it still isn’t), it still made for an uneasy, strangely exhilarating weekend. I found myself wanting to share my experiences—and wanting to check in with friends who might also live a little too close to the fire.
And where did I go? To Facebook and Twitter, naturally. I found myself posting pictures, reporting on ash fallout and counting my blessings with friends and acquaintances online. I checked in with others, relieved to hear they were safe (even if some of their homes weren’t quite yet). In an uncertain time, I found support and well-wishes and shared commiserations—and I was honestly surprised by how much it helped.
As I watched the local coverage roll on hour after hour, I noticed something else kinda cool: The anchors were responding directly to viewers’ Facebook posts and Twitter queries. Had houses been destroyed up the pass? No. Was there another fire out east? Yes. Could you tell me about the situation by my neighborhood? Sure could. This sort of interactivity (illustrated by the screen shot of one of our local station’s Facebook pages)—and ability to give folks the news most important to them—would’ve been impossible not long ago.
Residents affected learned where to find shelter or where to take their animals. People outside the immediate danger zones donated money online and found other avenues to help. Even as the city shut down roads (to aid the firefighting efforts) and parks (to prevent more fires from starting), people found ways to gather digitally, swapping stories and offering online hugs. Colorado Springs—a sprawling city with few citywide activities—felt, in some ways, smaller. Friendlier. More of a true community.
I still don’t quite know what I’m doing on Twitter. I’m certainly not at the point where, if I lost my account, I’d say (even in jest) that my life didn’t have meaning.
But this weekend, I found that those online channels did supply me with a strange sort of meaning: informational and emotional. I better understood what the “social” part of social networking really meant.
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