To put it another way, then, shame is all about exposure, and on Twitter exposure is the fundamental currency. Some of my friends speak of deleting tweets that failed to garner attention. I confess that I’ve done the same, eager as I am to curate an image of myself at my cleverest and most popular. I, at least, worry that my unnoticed tweets (and there are so many of them!) show me to be out of sync with the world. When I write something—whether clever or heartfelt—and get no response, my first feeling is not one of loneliness. Instead, I worry that I’ve actively shown myself to be out of touch with those around me. Tell an unfunny joke at a party, and only a few people will roll their eyes; make the same mistake online and the eye rolling is potentially unlimited.
At its core, shame involves a feeling of misattunement, the lingering sensation that we’re up to one thing while the rest of the world is doing something else altogether. Precisely because it promises to connect us with everyone at once, Twitter almost inevitably exposes us to this exact sensation of misattunement. On Twitter, we always teeter on the brink of shame—both because no one sees us and because too many do. Thinking we have the world’s pulse, we speak up, only to realize we’re drumming in an altogether different rhythm. What could be more shameful than that?
Perhaps because they always tarry with shame, Twitter’s users carefully police the act of shaming, treating it as a privileged tool and punishing those who employ it incorrectly.
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