After reading this article, I realized that I have been using rhetoric in my life on a daily basis. For instance, as someone who practically grew up on the internet, I am a big social media user. Throughout my days, I make posts on my various social media accounts, which includes Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. Though often inconsequential to my daily thought process, each one of the posts represents a rhetorical message. When I post a story on Snapchat or Instagram, my direct audience is my followers, which is a collection of my friends, family, and others that I have not seen or spoken to in a while. Though my audience can expand to husbands of people, my messages are limited to a target audience. For example, when I am out to dinner, I often take a video of my food and post it on my story. In this example, I am trying to communicate that I am out to dinner and this is what I am eating. But, there are moments where I post a story of me out in order to make someone else feel upset or jealous because they are not invited. Therefore, I am trying to communicate to a certain person that I am doing things without them.
When I make a post on Twitter, I consider this as an outlet to make people laugh. Most of my Twitter followers are not people that I know in real life. In fact, my Twitter is not linked with my name or photo. Therefore, when I post something to Twitter, I am trying to communicate that I am funny and understand the current sense of humor. Most of the time, my posts are related to new and interesting events in popular culture. By mosting about current events, I am trying to communicate that I am in touch with what is popular today. My audience can technically be anyone with a Twitter account because, unlike my Snapchat and Instagram profiles, my profile is public. However, since I mostly post about things that would make people in my age group laugh, I would say that my target audience is limited to my generation of Twitter users.
However, my use of rhetoric is not simply limited to my online presence, but it is just as omnipresent in my real life. For instance, when buying new clothes and getting dressed every morning, I attempt to make my outfits stylish and what I consider currently in trend. When I dress this way, I am trying to communicate that I have a sense of fashion, that I like to take care of myself, and that I am conscious of my appearance. I am trying to communicate this message to the audience of people that see me on a daily basis. Since I spend most of my days at school, I would consider my main audience to be my classmates, which are people around my own age.