Welcome to my feed

In early April, 2014, a little more than eight years after the service was globally launched, Twitter implemented a change for which emotional and psychological ramifications are still felt. They introduced what is known as the pinned tweet: a single 140-character dispatch selected by each Twitter user as fundamentally representative of what prospective followers might expect from their feed.

In theory it is a matter of choosing an amusing bon mot or witticism with which to welcome the uninitiated to one’s page. In practice it’s proven a decision of paralyzing strain. The trouble with settling on an illustrative tweet lay in deciding what precisely one would like to illustrate. And supposing you know what qualities you’d like your pinned tweet to underscore, have you in fact ever tweeted anything that evinces them? But settle on something you must, even if the material you’re drawing from isn’t sterling. So, what do you choose? Some are compelled, by either insecurity or pride, to put their best foot forward with a positive declaration. But whatever gains you may make in recognition are not worth the loss in delicacy and reserve. What such a pinned tweet announces to new arrivals is not so much the content of accomplishment as the fact that you believed it needed announcing.

You may prefer instead to take the opposite approach: the appointment of some merciless jibe. Possibly this will make you seem appealingly selfdeprecating. On the other hand it may just make you seem anxious and easily perturbed.

If you are in a creative field you may think it easiest to simply pin your latest work and update it whenever something new surfaces. The problem is that little date in the top corner of your pinned tweet will remind you constantly of your last pin-worthy achievement.

Your safest bet, then, may be to find a conspicuously trivial tweet, ideally a joke or recognizable meme. The relatively popularity will make it seem at a glance that your wit is widely cherished and admired; the levity will speak well of your disposition. Finally, it will defer judgement on the wisdom of your insights, the quality of your work and the parameters of your success, because it will suggest to anyone reading that they’ll just have to stick around see if they want to know the rest. Which is the best you can hope for on Twitter: not to impress anyone but to avoid the opposite.