A Tourist in Twitterland

My short career on Twitter so far has convinced me of one thing, namely that I have no desire to be a "Twitter celebrity," one of the the folks with many thousands of followers who Tweet on a regular basis, and whose Tweets are retweeted by many other people.

I'm talking here about people who are not "media celebrities" in the traditional sense (most of those folks are worthless), but people who are only "Twitter famous." Some don't even use real names, but only personas. They are usual the best folks to follow, to get the real gist of what Twitter is about. But I don't want to be one.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad such people exist. I'm glad they have taken upon themselves the burden of this kind of task. But a task it certainly is. It reminds of what it must be like being a television pundit, or a columnist. Not only must one opine, but one but do so on a regular schedule. Moreover in this day and age, there is duty to be interactive with people. On Twitter this means having conversations with people in your feed.

I'm much too reclusive for that. Moreover I don't have the chutzpah to put forth my opinions and observations as so authoritative on daily basis, about any subject under the sun. I'm not that clever, who is not that clever, all in all. I admire the people who can do that.

So much is my aversion to this kind of role that even my brief episode of having a mini-viral Tweet was exhausting. For a couple days running, people have been liking it. Finally the notifications have dropped off, and I'm glad for it. Yesterday, while perusing my feed, I found myself thinking of something slightly witty and interesting to say, that might have made a good re-Tweet. I hit the button to start typing a new post.

I felt an ego battle going on inside me. I imagined that my new post might become another mini-viral Tweet.  But what I had to say wasn't that important. I was posting it for gratification, as if my part of the conversation was someone important.

I had other things to do that day, than get distracted by the ding ding of the online social media casino machine. I hit the cancel button.

The same principle I described here applies to this blog, by the way. Somewhere along the line I realized that not only did I have no desire to be a popular well-read blog, but that I was actually averse to it. I don't make an effort to hide this blog, but to me this is an open invitation-only salon, where I can communicate to the small number of folks out there who actually know me (and to people in the distant future perhaps).

It almost feels like the lost art of letter-writing, one of those quaint 20th century things that no longer exists, but which I used to enjoy so much. It is something the kids of today will probably never know.