Book Twitter is a Strange Place · 9:10pm Feb 2nd, 2023
I mean it. Book Twitter is a weird place.
And yes, that’s already acknowledging that Twitter is a flaming cesspool. Which was true long before Musk got his hands on it. It definitely hasn’t gotten any better, but my brief examination of the book side of things the last few weeks was … Well, let’s just say it kind of felt like watching The Godfather or reading about The Sopranos.
Book Twitter is a very strange place.
Okay, let me give you some context. Normally, I ignore Twitter. I only have an account at all for two reasons, the first being that I didn’t wish anyone else to claim my name and start making posts and tweets under false pretenses—which is sadly something the book world has to worry about—and the second being that one fan has requested that I keep the Twitter account going because that’s how they keep track of the goings-on of my site.
Those are the only reasons I have it. Occasionally I’ll dabble in tweeting something specific for a book, or occasionally it has come in handy when needing to contact tech-support somewhere, but by and large, Twitter is something I ignore.
Oh, and it’s a flaming cesspool, if you haven’t heard. Twitter is insane. Even checking out my “feed” (which is supposedly content you’ll “like,” but Twitter seems to have a very different idea of what a rational person would like, and it’s only gotten crazier under Musk) a few times a year was enough to convince me “No, I have nothing I need here.”
But these last few months, I decided to actually look at the book-side of Twitter. I was following a project that interacted with “Book Twitter,” which until now I’d avoided, and I finally got my look at it.
It’s an utterly odd place.
"Feed" is nothing but computer guesses unless you smack it around a little, and computers guess *horribly* You should at least 'prime' the machine with a few quality follows
@asmallfiction for amazing (wait for it) very small fiction pieces
@monsterhunter45 for Larry Corriea (self-explanatory, and following some of his fellow authors is great)
@monokuromatic (Mono is Best Pony Person)
@DisneyFoodBlog (All of the Disney fun with zero calories)
I really pity anybody who follows me. They would be so confused. Ponies and politics. If I ever become a Real Author, I'll have to scrub my account and create a new one just for writing.
Still, Facebook groups seem to be the best place for writers.
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It's more that the feed doesn't really seem to care who I follow. It just shoves what it wants to without any care. Before Musk, it was one side of the political swing, after Musk it was the other and all of Musk's tweets, not that I followed him. He bought it for the megaphone, after all.
Honestly, I used to follow Larry. But as the years have gone by, he's gotten ... Well, you know that old saying of "you see yourself become the villain?" His twitter became that. At first it was just "Here's my book projects" and links to stuff. Then it became "I'm going to talk about politics now." Then it became the very thing he used to hate with 'So and so said this, here's a link followers so you know what to do' which was the exact kind of behavior he used to be against. The tipping point was when the only posts I was seeing from him anymore were about how Covid was a hoax and anyone who wore a mask was an [insert explicatives here] who was participating in the downfall of America.
I like Larry, but he's lately been a bit off the right-wing cliff, when he didn't used to be, and ultimately acting a lot like the very people he once stood again, just from the opposite perspective.