It is easier to see the beginning of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in my carpal tunnel finger constrict, when Twitter began for me, but I cannot lay my ruined finger upon the moment it ended, although it was probably when they reinstated @TruePatriotHangFauci4562847. And then verified him.
In retrospect, it seems to me that those days before I knew you could slide into Ted Cruz’s timeline and remind him about Cancun were happier than the ones that came later. Part of what I want to tell you is what it is like to have Mark Hamill like your tweet, how ten minutes can become ten hours with the deceptive ease of a TikTok dissolve, for that is how quickly precious time gets suctioned into the abysmal wasteland of the bird app.
I remember once, and by now I no longer knew what seasons or even weather was, suggesting to an offline friend that he join Twitter to help offset the impact of my being ratioed by a pack of trolls. He laughed literally until he choked, and then suggested I get therapy. I laughed with him, but it would be a long while before I would come to understand the moral of the story, or why SpaghettiOs sent that Pearl Harbor tweet.
It would be a long while because, quite simply, I was in love with Twitter. I do not mean “love” in any kind of traditional way; I mean that I was in love with Twitter in the way you love someone who has never acknowledged that you exist while at the same time profiting off you and your freely provided content.
Nothing was irrevocable. Everything was within reach. Just under this tweet lay another one, some meme I had never seen before or a Distracted Boyfriend variation I hadn’t known about. I could go to trending topics and meet someone calling themselves Duchess Goldblatt or Devin Nunes’ cow, or I could interact with Chrissy Teigen or John Cusack or Tay Tay, or I could ask Lindsey Graham what happened to his soul, or I could get into an endless argument with someone live tweeting an insurrection. I could stay up all night and create a sock puppet account to mock Tucker Carlson and The Federalist, and none of it would count.
Ha. When i look back on my time there in the blue site there is really only one time i think i can recall: Rob Delaney posted a pic of a toilet that looked like a filing cabinet with the caption "at least now i can file all my poos" to which i replied "who are you kidding, we all know you are just going to pile them on the corner of the kitchen bench like the rest of us". I laughed solidly for months at my own joke like it was the pinnacle of standup and i could retire. It got a solitary like from the man himself which was the only validation it needed. Man, those were the times.
Ha. When i look back on my time there in the blue site there is really only one time i think i can recall: Rob Delaney posted a pic of a toilet that looked like a filing cabinet with the caption "at least now i can file all my poos" to which i replied "who are you kidding, we all know you are just going to pile them on the corner of the kitchen bench like the rest of us". I laughed solidly for months at my own joke like it was the pinnacle of standup and i could retire. It got a solitary like from the man himself which was the only validation it needed. Man, those were the times.
To be fair, it was a pretty good joke