Hail to the Tweet

Grabbing America by the Tweetie.

After nearly two weeks blogging, I am becoming epiphany-weary. Over and over, I learn emotionally something I have known about the world for years now, but only intellectually.

My most recent epiphany is that the leader of the free world is no longer a man (or a woman, for that matter.) Just as Orange has become the New Black, so have software apps nearly become a replacement for our nations… and the borders are stricter than ever. As simple a matter as it might be to emigrate to the United Walls of Facebook, those who claim residency there are becoming as blind to rich diversity as any first-world country has ever been.

Here’s the thing: I became a WordPress denizen for a reason. This was a place, I believed, where ideas of a less, um… abbreviated nature could be shared with like-minded others. In my case, I was (and still am) excited by the prospect of refining my process as an author through feedback from other authors, and, while this exchange has begun, I must confess that I am distraught by a recent incursion across our national borders by some citizens of Faceboknia.

Not having a Facebook of my own, I asked my wife to promote my blog on hers. Despite our political divergences, she is a devoted companion, so she happily did so, and, that very day, the stats on my blog showed nine times as many views. While this is certainly good news–people were looking at my writing samples, if not reading them closely–what followed was more than a little disturbing. Comments and compliments and ‘likes’ by the dozen began flowing in: but all to her Facebook wall. Not one single view from that bumper day–NOT ONE–resulted in a comment here. It was as though the Faceboknians had taken a day-trip to the north, then rushed back home all hopped-up on Tim Horton‘s, laden with maple syrup and comical stories about our accents.

Sure, a true citizen of Faceboknia will sight-see now and then, stopping in on their Pinterest accounts to reminisce about a simpler society. Empowered and educated, the average Faceboknian enjoys, in small quantities, the foreign cuisine offered through Google+ and Bebo, the adventure tours she can book on Instagram, and the deep enlightenment available from a short trip overseas to WordPress. The UWF, however, is far from the first of these great nations; Faceboknian archaeologists, a news-feed recently reported, have unearthed relics from a privacy-loving ancient culture with no system of government, identifying itself only as MySpace.

Just as the USA depends on other nations for its manufacturing and labor, though, Faceboknia may be on the verge of a crisis of dependency with Twitter. Without the Twit Emirates, after all, how would it be possible to vent one’s current fashion preferences to an unsuspecting Third World who otherwise might not be listening? Thanks to Twitter, for example, these last few seconds have brought to light that the Lost Civilization of MySpace was merely a hoax perpetrated by a fake news item.

So, having a WordPress blog isn’t enough, and it seems I must seek multiple citizenships over there, in the Walls and the Emirates. If you are like most of the world, you may wonder what the harm is in this.

If you do wonder, then wait six months, and ask President Luthor how he ever got elected.