I'm Not Mentioning You On Twitter
So I just posted this Tweet:
“It tells me that you’re comfortable asking readers to pay you so that you can get better.” http://t.co/XNrhpOxdAr
— Ferrett Steinmetz (@ferretthimself) January 28, 2014
That’s a quote from an essay by Chuck Wendig, who is all over Twitter. I don’t follow Chuck. I don’t need to. He’s retweeted by my author friends at least six times a day, so I forget that I don’t have him friended, as there’s no human way to avoid him. It’s a good thing he writes fine essays.
Yet I didn’t tag him in this Tweet, because I don’t like tagging people unless I want them to weigh in. For me, the @ is like a 1st-level summoning spell, where you have a 10% chance of causing the Author Himself to appear, adjusted by the author’s CR. And in this case, I’m just saying, “Here, read this essay on self-publishing that I like but could be controversial,” and as such I don’t want Chuck to show up. If there’s any blowback from this Tweet, well, he’s getting enough of that on his blog. I doubt any worthy debate will occur on Twitter.
Yet I’m also doing a mild disservice to Mr. Wendig by not @-a-boying him, as people who like the essay are now less likely to follow him on Twitter. If they don’t realize this is a Chuck Wendig essay, maybe they’d be more likely to click through if I mentioned him. As a marketing tool for the mighty Chuck Wendig marching machine, I have failed.
I dunno. I don’t like yelling at people – “HEY YOU ON TWITTER!” – unless I have something interesting to say. And so I sometimes give the impression that I don’t read, when in fact I read voraciously, all the comments and entries and friends-lists – I just eschew notification unless I’m adding something other than, “I liked that.” But there are some people on Twitter who I know precisely because they do tag me all the time, and I feel more warmly inclined to them.
So should I? Probably. Do I? No. Even on the Internets, I’m strangely shy.
Dunno. No big wrap-up here. I just don’t rope in authors much on Twitter, because I worry I’ll bug them. Which is my entire life, really, trying not to bug anyone. I fail at it, but that’s because I’m a loudmouth. So it goes.
Especially since Twitter implemented the @ columns for All and Only-Those-You-Follow, I don’t mind tagging authors in posts I’m sharing from them in the least. I love being tagged myself, even if it’s just as a pat on the back. Tagging others, though, like Guy Gavriel Kay and Jim C. Hines, has spurred some of the best conversations I’ve had on Twitter. I imagine they, like Wendig, are famous enough to disregard any mentions they don’t care for, but sometimes it can be very meaningful to them. It doesn’t feel like a summon spell when it happens to me, just an invitation.