Two Twitter Thoughts - Higher & Lower

Woodpecker like, two thoughts hit me in quick succession as I noticed my twitter following has now risen to over 500 in three days.

That Lilly Tomlin joke: “When I was young I always wanted to be somebody.
Now I wish I had been more specific.”

And immediately following ;-) the potentially apocryphal: “The key to being good in the room is….. Keeping your mouth shut !”

Being somebody more specific ?

Isn’t that a sorta Carl Rodgers question ? therapists' talk, potential plus attached psychosomatic metric, or an SEO term type metamanagement tag, some kinda keyword prison, any specific me forces me over a blogging barrel to become a conceptual contractual muscle under the long tail. No one wants to be whatever that is, right ?

I am what I am and it’s taken me over forty years to accept my mental and emotional warts, my creative deficiencies, inherent character flaws and my obscure sense of self or should that be sense of obscure self ? Anyway should or can any one of us change, conform and maybe limit our opinions in order to become more popular ? Well as Obama said and proved, ‘yes we can’ but then who would 'I' become if I became that higher being ?

“Somebody specific” I hear my own internal cynic retort while pulling on my comfort(able) blanket of obscurity.

Surely we must all strive towards being a specific somebody that can easily fit into mental models and ‘democraphic’ understanding, compelled to content ourselves as commercial cerebral commodities that the successful probloggers tell each individual one of us we need to be, seen, heard and read to be, in order to ensure appeal to those individual strands within the individual tribes within collective customer clusters among the masses of mystery potential that might share who we are, if we only knew that specifically !

I resigned myself to never being ‘popular with the masses’ because not only do I not want to follow the top ten tips for getting terrific traffic or obliterating my obscurity but also Like all other creative people I know I’m a very successful… procrastinator, I don’t actually want to be a business with customers, I don’t want clients, I don’t really want to be compelled to sell anybody anything, I just want to learn from and enjoy the digital conversations emerging from twitter, the simple truth is I don’t want anything specific so, therefore how can I even think about offering something specific in return ?

Room to be more .... ?

In 2004 I had to somehow categorize myself here on Blogger, I’ve been a writer for over twenty years but sporadically earned my day to day living working in various areas of the technology, entertainment, education and indeed entertainment technology sectors. While interested in many many subjects and areas, my first love is and always was comedy and comedy writing. Ah yes I love to laugh... and then figure out why I'm laughing.... Aren't writers supposed to grow out of that 'its all about me' stage ?

As a well paid professional manager, director, creative, screenwriter and playwright I was also interested in team dynamics and collaborative work/writing, how technology could enable or hinder that process of understanding ? As a game developer and entrepreneur dealing with coders, artists, investors, banks and corporations you get into examining processes and needing to understand, theories, psychology, best practice, you need to understand people, you need to understand ‘how to behave’ with people. I learned to behave and I learned to understand - but nothing specific.

So the story goes, a British writer/journalist confesses that in the two years he’s spent as a member of an American scriptwriting team, he hasn’t actually contributed anything. That's nada, nothing, zero zilch, a conscious decision he made when given the following aforementioned advice by a veteran of that writing room: “The key to be being good in the room is….. Keeping your mouth shut.”

The yarn continues.... the British writer never offers an original thought nor an inflammatory remark during his two year stay, he basically keeps his mouth shut and as a consequence when his contract ends he's offered another as he hasn’t made any enemies, and he hasn’t actually contributed ! yet incredulously more importantly neither has he alienated anyone. Thus in that passive processes he collected a nice salary, a reputable scriptwriting credit and further opportunity.

Now whether you believe that story to be true or otherwise, it’s underlying didactic is being ignored on Twitter as the din of lots of people doling out advice on building a followers base, executing a PR/marketing idea or a 'how to' on developing personal twitter management strategies, becomes more and more prominent, most advocating that you become H.I.R.E. - Helpful, Informative, Responsive and 'an' Earthling. Offer that something more specific, don't 'keep your mouth shut' appears to be the kernel of the advice.

A choice between H.I.R.E or L.O.W.E.R. (Let Out Whatever Emerges Regularly)

The second means you use twitter as an electronic extension of your frontal cortex and just whack every unfiltered thought immediately onto screen and out into the twittersphere, by sheer volume of tweets you may eventually become ‘popular’ or at least followed by some of the more impulsive twitters on the main timeline. Or you can decide to use a strategy or alternative strategy or an alternative to the alternative strategy. Chris Brogan offers what's fairly sound advice (the real stuff I've parodied above in H.I.R.E.) if you are genuinely interested in strategy.

Strategy is for bored rooms and the military, I personally decided nothing in advance, being from Ireland, I first connected with several Irish People by following them, I soon encountered the volume twitters who became insufferable bores, when they pushed genuinely interesting thoughts and links off my screen at pace, I quickly dumped the regularly offending – a bit like kicking them out of that room for shouting, which is of itself quite odd, you see for most writers 'I' is usually the center of the room and our inherent rebelliousness tends to mean we are always 'decenters' irrespective of our location.

NANOWRIMO
But the last few days I've been trying to catch up on my novel word count and have conciously not been very active in the twitter stream - I didn't want to start a conversation and then run away in the middle of it, so I literally 'shut up' on twitter.in the last couple of days. I have followed other people and they have kindly reciprocated but have also been very quite, maybe I should stay that way....

any quick thoughts ?

About Me ++ About You : my 300++ connected Twitter followers

A pause in my daily writing & paddling of the twitter stream allows just a little time…to offer my response of sorts to previous posts, but specifically to thank Zoey Jordan , your good self and those other 300 individuals who incredulously have decided to follow me on Twitter since I joined about four weeks ago in early October.

Up until the age of 40 I was confused as to who I actually was, now… I’m not so sure anymore. I’m not looking to get into clever word games or a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs style psychology discussion or prompting any kind of tie-in Taoist reference about acceptance or self. I just want to observe that at a time in my life when I’m more comfortable ‘about me’ I find that my use of the internet continually changes my own perception ‘about me’ and that’s maybe more ‘about you’.

I remember a television advert, (back when people watched television and other’s bowled together) where a lady in a white coat stood mid shot and declared: “I’m not a dentist…but….I recommend” and thereafter waxed lyrical about the merits of a specific toothpaste.

That advert annoyed, almost infuriated me, her superficial attractiveness and friendliness were negated by the audacity of an actress (& her copyrighters) to offer expert orthodontist advice while not actually being expert (i.e. at least not in dentistry) but also in some weird counter advertising connection style – objectionable = memorable ? She acknowledged it before hand, I simply didn’t like that but still remembered it these many years later as that patronizing toothpaste ad. (note the absence of brand memory)

A genuine expert, whom I respect recently twittered about Martin Lindstrom’s dismissal of product placement, (She has protected updates). Martin’s marketing philosophy was outlined in last Sunday’s UK times as a sort of cognolinguist creativity craftily constructing memes targeted at specific clumps of individual dendrites within the individual brain. – Way beyond the life of Brian’s ‘we’re all individuals’ sort of idea, but with added technology, promise and mystery: all stuff that IMHO powers part of the intellectual aspects of this internet thing. By Martin’s standard’s a wafflely, all over the shop, humble and hastily constructed ‘thank you precious 300th followers, post like this will do little to ‘promote or advertise’ any brand that might be clevercelt.

But as you know all too well I’m not a brand and although connected and highly valued by me, you are not my customer nor consumer, as I have nothing to sell and no desire right now to manufacture anything to flog to you, I’m not an opinioneer or whatever someone with 300+ followers might somehow think they are entitled to call themselves, I’m simply a father, husband and writer first and foremost. And in that order, before I can be anything else connected with either others or technology, which means, like you, I must first inhabit my head wherever my Cartesian mind-body or the internet takes me.

Unlike Lonelygirl15, I’m not pre-scripted but I am primarily a writer and as with most of those writers I admire: I am concerned with ideas AND readership - while there is a point or rationale, perhaps even a catharsis, to writing for pleasure or self development, mastery of this craft does not happen today in isolation, as a writer I need an audience and on twitter - I've already got 300 people plus willing to listen to the occasional 140 characters form me. For that I am genuinely grateful. So thanks once again.

in response

I'm multi tasking today, in both real & virtual worlds. I wanted to share this video and then ask anyone who views it to go to You tube and check out the current 33 responses, which reinforces my understanding of active criticism.