The social media post I have chosen to write about is a Twitter post by Joshua Rush. Joshua Rush is most well known for playing Cyrus Goodman– the first canonically gay character in Disney- in the series “Andi Mack”. He is a role model to young people in so many ways: being politically active, an LGBT ally and member, and a climate activist. He had a weekly social media series titled “News in a Rush” where he broke down current news stories in a way that younger audiences could understand and be more involved. The intended audience of the tweet is any of his followers. He may not have the most followers, but he has quite a few (just over 119,000 to be exact) but majority of his audience shares the same beliefs as he does.
There isn’t really an argument presented in the tweet. The overall idea, or thesis, behind the tweet could be inferred based on his activism and prior social media presence. He supports our country’s leaders in many ways, but he, like many more Gen-Z’ers, is vocal about is dislike of President Trump. The main appeal in Joshua’s tweet uses pathos. Pathos appeals to the emotions, both happy and sad. There is not really a presence of ethos or logos in this tweet. Joshua has demonstrated his knowledge about the political climate in many of his other social media posts, but this one in particular is meant to be more humorous. It is often disregarded behind ethos and logos, but when used well, it can still sway a person’s opinion. Joshua’s humor and delivery of words in the tweet are perfect in using pathos.
The way Joshua wrote his tweet, along with many others, is quite informal. This way of writing in social media is popular with the Millennial and Gen-Z crowd. There is no capitalization in the post. The structure of the tweet is quite simple. There are just three lines, all are technically they are not sentence fragments, but there is no punctuation to make them real sentences. The initial impact of the post is meant to be humorous and making light of the current events of the world. Teens on Tik Tok have posted videos of themselves in Joshua’s words “borrowing” peoples ‘Trump Pence 2020’ signs. It is meant to be satirical. The deeper meaning behind this tweet is that there are so many young people that are trying to speak up in any ways that they can about their beliefs and what needs to be done.