This featured community question comes from member incomplete:
I found this question timely because of the recent absence I took away from everything online, both in contributing to it and consuming it. I mentioned that when I came back from Canada I thought I’d be relieved to be able to plug back in and instead felt the opposite, and oh yeah, forgot to mention that because I hadn’t used my phone in eight days, because I hadn’t texted or scrolled or hit a like button, within 24 hours of being home my wrist and thumb were in so much pain from performing all those functions again that I COULD NOT HOLD A PEN.
I still can’t. As in, I needed to write someone a check today and had to kindly ask that they fill in all the words and numbers because I had social media’d my hand.
In reading through the responses on that question one of the things that struck me is that I use social media somewhat differently than a lot of people. Yes, it’s my job, and that may have everything to do with it, but I don’t use Facebook to keep in touch with my family and friends. Sure, the occasional post from my niece will roll by, but every time it does it gives me a heart attack. Like, oh my god, that child I watched come screaming into this world just typed an informed opinion about shampoo. We are all marching toward death.
I post to Facebook to let people know I’ve written something, and I read Facebook to find interesting links. I think they configured their algorithm somewhere along the way so that all those people from my childhood I followed when I first signed up don’t really show up in my feed anymore. Those people who were preaching Christ and hell and damnation to the liberals. I think we are BOTH happy about this development as I’m sure that whenever they saw my face pop up they’d promptly take out their gun.
I also know only a very tiny fraction of the people I follow on twitter. Twitter for me is what I use as entertainment while standing in the airport security line and then waiting to board my flight. I seek out funny people and then those funny people will lead me to other funny people and, nope. I don’t know any of them. Some of them have followed me back and asked who on earth I am because how does a nobody like me have so many followers and a blue “verified” checkmark next to her name? I usually respond with, “I’m Lance Armstrong’s mom.”
Which reminds me, did I ever tell you about the time I got a direct message from Lance Armstrong? This was back when I wrote about sponsored posts, and I mentioned that the old Heather would have just told anyone complaining about them to shut up already, but the Heather who has been swatted a bit by life in the last couple of years was trying to be more thoughtful. Someone on twitter read the post and said something like, “I’m yawning. Bring back the old dooce.” So I jokingly responded with: “Suck it. Is that better?”
A few minutes later the text sound went off on my phone and I noticed it was from twitter. I have responses from people I follow and direct messages sent to my phone, and when I opened it up, this is what I saw:
I didn’t even notice the username I was so confused by the message. So I opened the twitter app on my phone to take a look at it:
Yeah. That’s him. That’s his official account, although from the message alone you could already tell that. I didn’t tell him that there are several very funny people on twitter who think his mom has her own verified account. And that his mom reeeaaaallly needs to watch her language.