My Love Letter To Twitter: Antidote to the Curse of the E-Good Girl

Dear Twitter,When we first met, I was intimidated. I admit, I didn’t get you. Little did I know that two years later, I’d not only love you, but I’d thank you for helping break the Curse of the e-Good Girl.Who knew that you’d be a stealth cure for the Good Girl rules of excessive, unhealthy selflessness and modesty? Your social norms allow women and girls who may struggle with the Curse to experiment with alternative ways of communicating.Here's why I’m crushing so hard on you:Brevity. You only get 160 characters. I have no choice but to trim off the “I don’t know if this is right, but…”, “sort of,” “kind of” and other verbal flotsam that clogs up my female speech. If you want to tweet right, you have to be clear and concise. You have to mean what you say and say what you mean. No room for self-defeating words.Permission to Self-Promote. Although the typical Good Girl downplays her achievements in a who-me-aw-shucks-no-really kind of way, you make it perfectly cool to self-promote. People (yes, myself included on occasion) love to retweet compliments or recent achievements. This is good news for a population that needs to celebrate itself a little more.Discretion. As I’ve written before, women often feel pressure to respond to emails immediately, no matter what else is going on in our lives. We’re almost always apologetic when we do. Not so with you, my friend. As your founder Biz Stone told Terry Gross in a recent NPR Fresh Air interview, you don’t have to reply to every last person who tweets you. It’s my choice. Nobody gets annoyed at me. Nobody is all “Oh, that Rachel Simmons, she thinks she’s so cool, she doesn’t have to write me back.” I have not yet seen a hashtag for #sorryittookmesolongtoreply.So thanks, Twitter, for giving me permission to make choices based on what I can and want to do, rather than my fear of who might get annoyed or hurt when I don’t reply. Thanks for letting me toot my own horn. And #thanksforjustbeingyou.