Romeo and Twitter by Chad Martin Z. Natividad | art by Shara Mae L. Pelayo

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iterature, by itself, is accomplished work. That being said not necessarily in quality, for its elements are often weighed like inspected jewels, but in terms of completion, or the understanding that it is post-creation handiwork, from the first word inscribed to the last. Inevitably, years pile up on all forms of compositions, with many outliving their authors. Popular and ingenious works that prove promise are knighted as classics. Their content, then lives on in whole, only rarely revised to an extent; or otherwise reintroduced through translation. In a climate of technology, literature has perched on a new and branching platform: social media. Fresh forms of literature have blossomed by taking advantage of the faster and more accessible variant to pen and paper. And recently, one of the most prominent of those platforms is Twitter. Twitter is easily recognized by the basic unit for all its user-made content, called Tweets. Each tweet, or post as for other mediums, previously 36

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had a strict limit of 140 characters each (updated to 280 just this year). Literature evolved from the social media’s currency as various forms of reinvented prose and revived poetry forms have since then slowly emerged. In fact, the social media has even inspired a Twitter-natured book composed entirely of tweets alone. Hatched inside a dorm, Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin, two 19-year old male students from the University of Chicago published a book in 2009 entitled Twitterature: The World’s Greatest books in twenty tweets or less. Whether or not the book mentioned is in fact a compilation of trimmed literature in the form of tweets or just a collections of tweets related to literature, is a fact subject to your opinion. Within the tome, you’ll find yourself reacquainting with ancient titles and authors such as Beowulf, Tolstoy, Dickens and Shakespeare; to more recent ones like Harry Potter, Kafka, Twilight and The Da Vinci Code. Amounting to more than 80 literary names,