Those Who Can’t Write, Tweet

Confessions from cyber Hell

I have a confession to make. I’m slightly addicted to something I in many ways despise — Twitter.

I mean, it’s not that I’m consumed by it like some are. Nor am I claiming it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to humanity. (Although, in some ways, it pretty much is.)

And I get it. More or less. Because I’m all for community and connection. I’m all for giving a mouthpiece to the unheard, and for having a finger on the pulse of global humanity, in real-time.

Yet I find it profoundly sad we’ve grown so far apart in real life, this pale imitation has to serve as its proxy. (Nearly as sad as “IRL” having become an acronym.) Both reek of loneliness, desperation, and disconnect.

And so, to compensate, folks go all-in. They immerse themselves fully in that endless, doomscrolling feed of trivialities. And they convince themselves they’ve found their tribe.

And it’s true. They have. But what kind of tribe?

I joined Twitter a decade ago, always with the plans and hopes of building my “author brand,” my personal and professional writing presence and persona on the web.

And it hasn’t been wholly unsuccessful. Eight thousand one hundred and seventy tweets later, I’ve steadily, painfully built that “brand” to where I now have a few thousand followers.

So far so good then. I’ve done my work. I’ve put in the time. I’ve collected my memes and I’ve paid my dues.

Until at last, the long-awaited moment arrives. My years-in-the-making, debut children’s picture book is published and ready for launch.

This is it, Twitter. This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is my reason for patiently enduring those months and years of banality; for putting up with your petty demands on my time, your dumbing down and angering of my thoughts and discourse.

But it’s all been in service to a higher cause. And now’s when it shall all come to fruition.

Now is when I’ll huck my long-dreamt-of, viral power tweet, the one that’ll sear Wigglesworth into the collective consciousness, drawing in thousands of book sales with a single chirp. Fame and fortune, here I come.

And so I launch. I tweet. I post. I comment. I share. I tweet. I hashtag. I tweet some more. And I wait. And I wait some more.

Oh, but alas. Such is the stuff of fantasy. Pixie dust in the wind.

But, hold on a second. That can’t be right. Surely my tweets will find their way into hearts and minds the world over. Surely my lyrical tome will soon fill the bookshelves of smiling children across the nation and around the globe, if only I try harder. So I keep at it.

I obsess over my online sales stats, returning to them hourly, like a crack monkey going back to the shock button for its fix. But much to my naïve amazement, they stubbornly refuse to grow. A sale here, a few sales there. All to people I know. Mostly ones related by blood.

Damn. Suddenly it seems all was for naught. As easily as it first seduced me with its promise, Twitter callously disabused me of my illusions, revealing my efforts for what they were — a failed prayer to a false idol.

And yet, despite all that, I still continue to tweet. I continue to cling to a forlorn hope that somehow it will make the slightest difference. That it will actually draw people to my writings as intended. I do it with my stories here.

And the results?

Behold, the stats on my far-and-away, most-read (and only distributed) article to date:

Out of over two thousand views, a whopping eleven came in from Twitter. That’s right, eleven. For the mathematically inclined, that’s less than one-half of one percent.

Surely I tweeted it more times than that. Surely thousands of people saw that ghoulish ribcage flowing through their streams at least once. But no. All that effort for eleven views.

And it’s not like it’s been a joyride. For such a paltry return on investment, I’ve put up with bots, with trolls, with endless anger and stupidity and casual cruelty, with feeling my brain atrophy while watching tweets of “Who likes bubble gum?” get thousands of likes and retweets while my pathetic whisperings get scarcely a notice.

And then, of course, there’s that desperate need for recognition and acceptance I spoke of earlier. Thus you’ll see:

“I’m taking a little break, Tweeps.”

Gee, thanks for the out-of-office notification.

#NewProfilePic

Yeah, they call it a selfie because narcissistie is too hard to spell.

Who am I kidding? These aren’t my people. These aren’t my friends. These are random, disinterested, anonymous strangers masquerading as comrades and confidantes.

It begins to affect you after a while. It begins to seep into you, and it leaves you stained.

Now, please don’t get me wrong. I don’t wish, as Yann Martel put it, “to kick at people’s crutches.” I simply wish to walk unencumbered myself.

My book came out in late October of this year. I discovered Medium in late November.

Having spent the intervening month incessantly swimming the sewers of Twitter, arguing with anonymous Internet assholes in two hundred and eighty character soundbites — all theoretically in service of selling books, but to no avail— I feel like I’ve at last discovered the walled garden. Or better yet, the high-class speakeasy.

I’ve decided tweeting is for the rabble. I’d far rather write in true prose and let the commoners hash it out with hash tags.

And frankly, I don’t care how elitist that sounds. For it’s the truth: A writer is someone with things to say and the skills to say them, whereas a tweeter has only things to say. Or as Plato put it:

“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”

And what I’m saying — perhaps more bitterly, and arrogantly, and long-windedly than necessary — is that here at Medium, I feel like I’ve found my tribe, my people.

I feel like I’ve stumbled into a cozy inn, after years of wandering the wilderness. So we should feast and be merry.

Or if we must dispute and disagree, I welcome the eloquence and civility here. How refreshing to rediscover! Leave your brilliant mini-essays in my comments section, I implore you.

That’s not to say you won’t find my writing to be total garbage either. If by chance you do, you’re certainly free to tell me as much.

But hey, no worries. For if it’s true, I can always still tweet.

Happy writing, all!

Colby Hess is a freelance writer and photographer from Seattle, and author of the freethinker children’s book The Stranger of Wigglesworth.

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