Entry #57 - Twitster? Spitter?…ugh, nevermind - Spinsterhood in Tweets

Dear Diary,

I am doing that thing that I swore I would never do. No, not that thing! Gross! The other thing...

I was recently signed up for the Twitters. The verb use is correct, signed up - as in someone else created an account without my knowledge and then sent me the login information. Twitter conscription, if you will.

One of the reasons I have avoided Twitter is for the same reason I avoided standing alone at the side of the gym during slow songs at high school dances - it makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable to draw attention to my own lack of popularity in such a public forum… “Nothing pathetic or pitiful going on over here…carry on grinding to K-Ci and JoJo while I pretend to look for a chapstick in my purse for the next five minutes”.

I know what you’re thinking...you’re thinking “don’t you do JUST THAT right here on this very blog?”, and you know what? You have a very good point; no one would deny that my insignificance and lack of popularity are discussed quite openly here and that this blog is indeed accessible to anyone who has an interwebs connection and an inclination to search “spinster porn” in the googles. But there is something different about Twitter. There is an egotistical presumption that is inherent in the Twitter concept, the presumption that my random musings (up to 140 characters) are worthy of being broadcast and that people actually care to hear them. Deep down in my heart (beyond the duct tape, glue, and staples) I am aware that the number of people who will care to hear my random thoughts throughout the day is a number that could probably best be described as "paltry" or "mom plus 2". I accept that I am not consistently that interesting or funny. If I am eating a piece of pizza I don't feel that the world wants or needs to hear about that. Justin Bieber has 16 million followers on Twitter, all of whom care in a Savage Garden kind of way if he is eating a piece of pizza - truly, madly, deeply.
I shall be pleasantly surprised if I can get 16 followers. Total.


I would be lying by omission if I did  not admit that the other reason I have avoided the Twitters for so long is for the same reason I disliked Scrabble for a number of years…

 I slammed my laptop shut and decided then and there that Twitter was a platform for egotistical braggarts!

I texted Heather immediately, for she always says the right thing about bullcuss like this and because she has a propensity to be awake at ridiculous hours. So I text her a brief description of what I had just read and she replied to my text with one of her own that read something like this…

“I found out tonight that my ex got back together with the girl he dated before me. Long story short - I came home, filled a water glass with wine, and then proceeded to eat a brick of cheese and cuddle with my mom. New Years sucks”.
I called Heather back right away, and we provided each other with some free therapy in the form of cutting sarcastic remarks about the offending parties and their respective lady conquests. By the end of the phone call we were both laughing and the sun was coming up. Thank you, Heather, for saving me from myself.

As much as it induced nausea to read those tweets at the time, and for the record I in no way recommend the mindcuss that is looking at an ex’s Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace(for those times you time-travel back to 2005), I now wish that I had twitter that New Years, because then I could have retweeted him and added my own pound key hash tags:

#poormanshannah #beigecurtains

Phew, good thing I crossed “Be less of a bitch” off my resolutions list, hey? Always setting myself up for success.

And so, a year after deeming it “a platform for egotistical braggarts”, I have become a tweeter…twittered…tweetee…whatever, I have a Twitter account. I am going to try my darndest to never tweet things like “at the store”, “listening to music”, or “eating burritos at Taco Bell”. I know that doesn't really leave much to tweet about, but cuss darn it, I’m going to try!

So far I have “tweeted” 6 times. I’m not sure how well I’m doing since Twitter to me is like call waiting to my grandma, I get the basic concept but I’m not certain that I know how to use it properly, which makes me anxious. I still don’t really get why is the pound key is called a “hash tag” all of a sudden. Hasn’t it always been a pound key on the phone? “Press pound for more options”, right? I have looked into it since being signed up, and even after some research I still don’t have a strong grasp of the pound key hash tag, so I’ve decided to just go ahead and use it randomly and with reckless abandon (an attitude I would happily extend to sex, were it not for my inherent prudishness and lack of self-confidence).

Here are my tweets thus far, along with my random pound key hash tags:

Are any of these appropriate/correctly used? I have absolutely no idea. I can only hope that pound keys hash tags, much like modern dance, are just accepted no matter how nonsensical and bizarre.


So, if you have the Twitters and you wish to be intermittently alerted to my trivial musings, you may find me @SpinsterMansion.

For all my bitching about Twitter, I’d like to truly thank my good friend Enisa for setting it up, because above all it told me that she truly believes that I have something interesting to say once in a while, which is a compliment no matter which way you slice it.

Also thanks to Katie, who tweets via @MsKatieEllen - it was looking forward to her hilarious tweets on Facebook that allowed me to get past lesser uses of the Twitter. In all honesty, you should probably follow her instead of me, her brand of funny is so smart it gives me an inferiority complex.

#knowinglaughter

#backhandedcompliment