How are you a social entrepreneur?

I'm originally from San Diego. My parents moved to Cleveland when I was really young, and subsequently had the bright idea of homeschooling their three children. Did they want us all to be socially inept and bad at math for the rest of our lives? I don't have the answer to that question, but by the time 5th grade rolled around Bonnie had to call it quits on instructing her young in the arts of multiplication and Spanish as a second language, prompting the even better idea of enrolling us in private Baptist school. Are we Baptist? No. But I can tell you all about the practices of hardcore, inner-city Baptist culture: Girls aren't allowed to wear pants. Men can't wear their hair long. Only Satan listens to music with drums in it. No offense to any of my Baptist friends--this was a variety of the religion that I haven't come across since, although many of my friends identify with this religion. After 3 years of this social experiment, my mom finally decided I was weird enough to put into public school because I'd probably make lots of friends.

Because of this unorthodox childhood, I didn't get into social media until pretty late in the game. I had a Myspace until at least senior year, and I admit that with great amounts of shame. Facebook is something I didn't start using until the summer before college, and I had no idea how to navigate Twitter until the summer after my freshman year of college. If I had been asked at any of those times about being a social entrepreneur through those media outlets, I wouldn't have been able to relate to the idea. I saw social media as a basis for connecting myself to other people that I already knew, and to creep on the ones I didn't.

I've tried blogging before, but the idea has always made me uncomfortable. I don't like to think of someone peering over my shoulder and reading my thoughts- but isn't that what social media is? We post things on all of these different outlets because we want the reactions of others on things that we did, saw, thought, or created. Each time I tweet, check in on Foursquare (don't judge), or upload a photo to Facebook, I'm subconsciously thinking about the social interactions that will occur because I logged on. I might get 50 retweets (not), or a friend could simply come up to me the next day saying, "I died laughing at what you posted," or, "I totally agree." I don't know that I'm necessarily changing the world with my tweets or Instagrams, but the fact that we have an outlet to get thousands of people to pay attention to 140 characters of our thoughts instantaneously is kind of awesome. There's a trend of profiles on Twitter that can have anywhere between 400,000 and 1 million followers- variations of Common White Girl, Tweet Like a Girl, some even entitled 'no,' or 'k.' They all tweet the exact same things: "relationship status: eating" was posted more than once by every single one of these accounts, getting hundreds of favorites and retweets each time. I for one am righteously indignant and personally refuse to follow any of these accounts: a) because I'm immature. Why don't I have that many followers? b) If those 400,000 followers were being exposed to something with more substance than "if you think i'm ugly now u should have seen me in 2009," perhaps something a bit more thought-provoking could be set in motion. I'm not saying these accounts don't have a place on social media; clearly, they're very popular and get a laugh out of a lot of people. I guess my point is that I would rather be credited with getting reactions out of my followers with an original idea. In short, when I put a thought or idea out on some form of social media, and others connect with it--especially if I thought it only applied to me--that is when I feel like a social entrepreneur.