Almost Nobody Actually Uses Twitter And Other Things I Can't Wrap My Head Around

Whaaaaaa?

My boss is back on his CoolSculpting® kick because he thinks it’s going to magically erase his whisky gut and make him sexy for the ladies. He’s completely computer illiterate and has no idea who Linda Evangelista is or the horror she went through when she tried this “non-invasive alternative to lipsuction.”

I could try to tell him stories from my online friends about the giant, useless, snake-oil money grab that is CoolSculpting®, but this is a man who makes me clean the office toilet. So, no.

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This week I was sitting at my desk at work eating Triscuits and peanut butter (don’t you dare judge me) when I stumbled across this article by Will Leitch.

In it, Will cites some fascinating and bizarre (to me, anyway) statistics, such as only 23% of Americans have a Twitter account, and less than half of them look at it every day.

I am not one of those people. I’m hopelessly addicted to Twitter, and, if I do say so myself, I’m kind of a big deal there (Ed. Note: Bev is not a big deal on Twitter).

Twitter was my first online home. And after many, many years of shamelessly throwing everything I’ve got at the wall to see what sticks (mostly nothing), I’ve accumulated around 13,000 followers.

Twitter even selected one of my less-funny tweets to plaster all over the New York City and San Francisco transit systems as part of a questionable publicity campaign.

In return, I got a water bottle, some stickers (?), and two cheaply made t-shirts emblazoned with my tweet in size XXL.

I think the most interesting takeaway from Will’s article is that we all think we’re the center of the universe, right? If we’re on Facebook, then everybody else must be on Facebook. If we’re on Twitter, everybody else is on Twitter.

… Twitter’s outsized influence holds such sway over the rest of us because so many of its users are so convinced that the world outside of Twitter somehow matters less than the world in it — that if it’s not on Twitter, it doesn’t mean anything. And this just isn’t true. Seventy-seven percent of Americans — 254 million people — have never looked at Twitter at all. Not only are they not represented by Twitter, they have no idea what the hell any of you are talking about. It is remarkable, at the end of a long day of doing literally anything else but look at Twitter, to see all the circular conversations people are having about in-jokes and memes that no one other than the same people who have been talking to each other all day could possibly understand. It really is remarkable. - Will Leitch in It’s OK to Ignore Twitter

I have over 3,000 followers on Medium and literally nobody I know in real life even knows what Medium is. I actually earn money by posting there and the site has zero impact on the world at large.

The greatest exercise we can try as human beings is exploring media and platforms outside of our normal beaten paths to see what other people are thinking and feeling and saying. In the words of Stephen King,

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”

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Just in passing because I can’t get this out of my head, apparently you can live on nothing but potatoes.

A laborer in 19th-century Ireland would consume on average four pounds of potatoes per day, plus some milk if it was around and the occasional rabbit or other random protein.

By the 19th century, potatoes supplied 80 percent of people's calorie intake and was a major source of livestock feed. — Potatopro.com

I mean, I like potatoes but, wow.

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I have this dream where I’m paid money to do basically nothing. (That’s called “being a writer”, so I’m well on my way.)

But how about just talking? And not even words you had to make up — somebody else’s words?

Sign me up.

Apparently Amazon, by way of Audible, has a program called ACX (Audiobook Creation Exchange) whereby authors look for voice talent to narrate the audiobook of their work. All you need is a good mic and a small empty closet. I gather that’s where a lot of podcasts are being born.

I can sit in a closet and talk.

Now, needless to say, it’s a little more complicated than that. A lot of the talent are actors who can do different accents and emote and whatnot. You need to know audio terminology like “room tone.” Stuff like that.

I know what room tone is.

I can emote.

I’m going to go buy a microphone and toss all the crap out of a closet. BRB.

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Finally, in the department of WTF, a female corrections officer at the Lauderdale County Detention Center in Florence, Alabama, about 75 miles west of Huntsville (like I have any idea where Huntsville is) walked away with confessed murderer Casey Cole White and never came back.

The corrections officer, Vicki White, was allegedly escorting him to a mental health evaluation at a nearby courthouse, but there was no mental health evaluation and the vehicle they were in was later found in a shopping center parking lot.

Now, this guy is well over six feet tall. I can’t believe somebody’s not going to notice him or the blonde who’s almost 20 years his senior bopping around trying to start a new life together.

It’s fair to think that maybe he overpowered her and is holding her hostage, except for all the lying that went into getting him out of the jail.

Of the entire subset of eligible men in the universe to destroy her life for, she picked this guy? Really?

She turned in her retirement paperwork the day before the couple absconded, so that was pointless. As a county employee, she probably had a nice little nest egg and full medical. All of that is history now.

SMH.