Sunday, May 17, 2009

Why in the world is Carman SanDiego Following Me?

So the other day I create a twitter account in order to score some free tickets for the new Star Trek movie. I wasn't successful, mostly because I understood the process so poorly my "tweet" didn't even get to the right person -- not exactly like sending an email (which is indeed the whole point).

And now I have three followers -- yep, three people who have subscribed to my twittering even though I have only tweeted once and swear as the electronic Gods are my witness not to do so again. Vast and sundry reasons for this, not the least of which is that even if Einstein or perhaps Robert Heinlein were alive today and tweeting it wouldn't be of any interest whatsoever: it's a rare writer indeed who can write something at the spur of the moment in 140 characters that's worth reading (Einstein's tweet -- "Still working on that space/time thing: man, it's harder than it looks!").

But totally aside from my disdain and lack of need for this bizarre form of communication, I am at a loss as to understand why anyone would want to sign up to follow me. It can't be because they know me, or know of me -- if they did they would most certainly take advantage of the forums I host, or the blogs I write to communicate and/or keep up to date on anything I might write that would be of interest.

No, it's most certainly some sort of random decision and I'd love to understand just what that thought process is. It's almost assuredly because of my "tweet" name (Kelleytoons -- everything else I tried was taken). Does that actually mean anything to anyone? Did they visit the Kelleytoons site to see what was going on? (No, because of what I wrote earlier).

So much of the universe is random, and human behavior certainly fits that model, but the temptation to contact some of these folks and find out the answer to this mystery is almost overwhelming. I say "almost" because it would involve, don't you know, the process I am loathe to participate in.

Besides... I'm don't know if I really want to know. When I was doing a lot of local television I used to get recognized all the time at the supermarket, or going out to eat, and while most of the time it was very nice and flattering there were some occasions that it was disturbing. Once a guy stopped me as I was coming out of a steakhouse to tell me he wanted to be my agent, that I was "ten times better than Leno!" and that we could get a big Hollywood deal. Right. Or the teenage girl who called up our talk show and wanted to date me. Yep, the Lolita thing is right up there at the top of my bucket list.

I'm not sure I like being stalked, but I'm pretty sure the more I know about it the less I'll like it. Ignorance is bliss.

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