What's Happening
an art project
When one visits the homepage of Twitter dot com—whether one has logged off since one's previous session or not—one is greeted with an inquiry. "What's Happening: An Art Project" attempts to answer with an echo: What's happening, and where? Why does it matter, and why should we trust you?
I sent out a tweet requesting volunteers, and—knowing the limitations of my own internet "influence,"—reached out to others directly for support; many people were kind enough to retweet my "ad," even those who themselves did not wish to be directly involved. I posted on other platforms. Word did spread, and I eventually had to send out form replies, as it was the only way to keep up with the influx of direct messages I was receiving from willing participants.
“My project is really, really simple: I need as many people as possible to tweet, “What’s happening?” (the prompt text Twitter’s API has in the Tweet box) at the exact same time, preferably as all-over geographically as possible.
In today’s political climate, what with internet communication, clickbait journalism, and “Fake news!”, people are relying more and more on the first hand accounts of civilians as told through social media. We, as humanity, can always overpower those who seek to hide the truth by combining our voices and sharing our stories. So, what’s happening?
The tweet time/day is going to be March 1st at 13:00 (1pm) Eastern Standard Time. The more precise the better, is the goal is to have everyone do it at once, but better a minute late than not at all.
If you wanted to help in other ways, spreading the news is useful, too. I can send you the link to the tweet to retweet, plus there’s always the share function on Facebook. And of course, good ol word of mouth!
Thank you so much!”
After the designated time came and went, I searched out and compiled as many of the the "What's happening?" tweets into a Twitter Moment as I could (I did not require participants to have profiles open to the public [for if a tree falls], so not all Tweets could be accessed by myself).