Tweeting the Pain Away

Every generation has seen its share of revolutions, both social and political. Yet with the dawn of Facebook and Twitter it seems impossible to understand how any revolution succeeded without these two resources. The internet culture seems obsessed with placing social networking on some sort of pedestal, Wikipedia already lists four separate revolutions as "Twitter Revolutions" and two of them are also known as the "Facebook" and "Wikileaks" revolutions.

It is not the internet that has caused, or even started these revolutions, rather they have been created by the same things revolutions have been cause by for centuries, unfair political practices, inequality, and tyranny. The internet has only changed the way these revolutions are waged. Things like Twitter and Facebook have allowed Middle Western protesters connect with American activists, which not only means more people hear about these revolutions but more support can be garnered. Simple donations made through Facebook add to the fight, and allow weak ties a greater ability to support causes that don't affect them.

The internet also brings revolutions another, perhaps underrated tool. All Twitter and Facebook are at their core, are ways for people to publish thoughts and opinions. At any revolutions core is the literature used to propagate the issues and ideals the revolutionaries are fighting for. We can back even further then Gladwell's argument to the Civil War, where abolitionists distributed pamphlets to slaves in the south, and in fact several slave revolts were blamed on the spread of abolitionist documents.

Social network and media has caused an evolution in the way the spread of ideas occurs. This does not mean that all of the sudden revolutions are now regulated to the domain of the internet, nor that Twitter and Facebook only succeed in, "helping Wall Streeters get phones back from teen-age girls".

With so many areas of society being changed and re-worked through the power of the internet, there is only one clear way to see things now. The internet has changed the way we think and the way we communicate, but that doesn't mean we couldn't before.