Right; that story yesterday.  I don’t know, maybe I’ve talked about this before, but what the hell, let’s talk about it again:  the Internet is really freaking weird, people.

You’ve heard of the Twitter, right?  I don’t follow anyone I actually know because nobody real actually uses Twitter.  (Wait, no.  I follow one person I know in the real world.  But I think she’ll state as fast as anyone that she’s not real on Twitter either.)  Who do I follow?  Writers, mostly.

I spent all of last weekend reading short stories, mostly short stories by Saladin Ahmed and Nnedi Okorafor, both of whom have recently released collections that I either bought (Okorafor) or downloaded (Ahmed).  Both of these authors are talented and awesome and you should pay attention to them.  And I follow both of them on Twitter.  Note that the first links are to their twitter feeds and the second are to the books I was reading.  (And, oh, hell, Engraved on the Eye is free right now as a Kindle download– go get it right now!  Then pay for a paper copy of Throne of the Crescent Moon, which is one of my two or three favorite books of 2013.)

Now, important fact:  I tend to get authors’ styles stuck in my head when I read a lot of them.  No bullshit about it:  I wouldn’t have written Crossroads had I not spent the weekend bathing my brain in short stories by these two writers.  No chance at all.

Here’s where Twitter is ridiculous:  I came close– damn close— to Tweeting a link to the damn story to the two of them and being all “OH HAY DUDEZ LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!!1!”

Which, I’m pretty sure, is the rough interwubz equivalent of running up to them in the grocery and tossing my screenplay in their cart or something like that.  It’s wankerish, which is why I didn’t do it.  But… jeez, Twitter makes it so easy.  I chastised Nathan Fillion the other day, for God’s sake.  I didn’t notice until I hit send that I’d also included Alan Tudyk and Patrick fucking Rothfuss in the tweet.  What the hell.  Which, okay, granted, this is what they signed up for, is direct interaction with people, but… shit, they don’t need to hear my nonsense.

(I finish that sentence and remember that I’ve already Tweeted at Saladin Ahmed about Engraved on the Eye this week; I definitely can’t do it twice.)

I dunno; it’s weird.  On the one hand, maybe “Hey, here’s this stupid thing I wrote; you inspired it” is something that people don’t mind seeing.  On the other hand, there’s this weird fan boyish hey important dude please read my shit vibe to it that I don’t like at all.

(Then there’s the whole nah, dude, they’re people too, just like you, they’re not special just because you’ve heard of them and they’ve not heard of you thing, but I swear to god the issue here is that they’re strangers and not celebrities.  I wouldn’t randomly pull you out of a crowd to make you read my nonsense either; presumably most of y’all came here on your own.)

And that, boys and girls, is why Infinitefreetime is too damn old for Twitter.