OK, who would have ever thought a fictional yellow canary who came into our lives 70 years ago would have a first cousin who is blue and calls himself "Twitter"?
I just made that up. I'm searching for Twitter friends and I'm failing miserably, so I embellish to get attention.
I'm new to the "Twitter" world, and I'm beginning to think that the only people who tweet are celebrities or people under 39. I resisted even getting a Twitter account because I was afraid that no one would follow me, and it turns out I'm right -- which is like being rejected all over again by the popular kids in high school.
I didn't know what to expect and had no idea how this Twitter thing worked. When I signed up a few weeks ago @pat_gallagher, somehow seven people were following me within minutes. I have no idea where they came from or how they found me, but I wanted to kiss them on the lips. I felt wanted. I'm thinking most of them are in prison, but I can't be sure. (Since then, over the next few weeks, six of them have bailed out on me.)
In the beginning, those seven followers increased to nine, then went back down to seven, then climbed slowly to eight, then 10, then back down to seven, then up to nine, dropped to a disappointing five and has slowly climbed to 18. I'm more insecure than ever because every day I look at my "followers" numbers and fear that the number will drop again and that's more stressful than I can tell you. When someone follows and then unfollows, it's pretty humiliating. If I've begun to follow someone who began to follow me (the courtesy follow) and then suddenly they unfollow me, I go to their stupid little blue bird and slam my hand on "unfollow" and yell: "Take that!!"
I still don't know what RT, MT or # means. I know I should take the little Twitter tutorial but I'm waiting to see if I have it in me to "study" before I commit to a long-term Twitter account. If I have to beg for followers (to keep my self-esteem from plummeting), then is it worth it for me to get a PhD in Twitter?
I've over 50, so I'd love to know if I'm the only one out there in my age group who tweets... besides celebrities.
I've slowly climbed up to 50 people that I'm following, mostly celebrities I like: Ron Howard, Henry Winkler, Steve Martin, Rita Wilson, Gayle King (all over 50... are you detecting a pattern here?), my friend Bill in California, Huffpost/50, Chelsea Handler (I began following her by mistake because when I first signed up, her blue bird was the first to pop up so I hit "follow" just to see what would happen).
I'm subjecting myself to more humiliation by writing this little blog to see if anyone will humor me and "follow" me so I can add to my numbers. I'm not expecting Lady Gaga numbers (27,720,339 followers) or Justin Bieber numbers (25,780,864 followers) or even Ron Howard numbers (361,174 followers) but I would like to hit at least 20 by the weekend (any weekend).
Or, maybe I'm the only post-50 non-celebrity person in North America who is actually tweeting. If you are out there, and if you follow me, I will follow you (as long as you're over 20 and aren't kinky).
Is it going to hurt two more people to follow me? Do I need to say please?