Peggy Orenstein's Essay 'I Tweet, Therefore I Am'

In her article “I Tweet, Therefore I am”, Peggy Orenstein states that people using social media live in a performance culture that erodes the very relationships it tries to create, and alienates them from the real world. When users post without conscious thought, the world goes from a stage to a reality television show where every move you make is broadcast. Studies have shown that living like this will result in a loss of empathy. People can not put themselves in other 's shoes because they already know every detail of the person 's life already. Orenstein also states that people form their identities based off of their social media persona. When people start on social media, it will be the real them. As they progress, they start to tweet to please their audience. Thus, people become their Twitter persona in real life. Finally, Orenstein says that Twitter normalizes the oddities of everyday life. This being that it blurs the lines not only between public and private but also between the authentic and contrived self.

Another way author Orenstein establishes logos effectively to convince the reader to become one with twitter is by using statistics.When considering how many people are empathetic in their tweets, the article reads: “in an analysis of 72 studies performed on nearly 14,000 college students between 1979 and 2009, researchers at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan found a drop in that trait, with the sharpest decline occurring since 2000.” (Orenstein) She uses this statistic to claim that social media may not have instigated that trend, but by encouraging self-promotion over self-awareness, they’re accelerating it. The numbers in the statistic automatically strike an appeal to logos and the author steers the attention of the reader to how much empathy has declined in people since 1979. It is effective in that it pushes readers to be more self-aware and less self-promoting. It is effective for the audience it is geared