The bad news: Anne Lamott fucked up today.
The good news: I have rediscovered Twitter. Again.
The bad news: I’m out of popcorn.
The good news: I’m on Atkins so no carbs.
My love for and obsession with social media is ironic. I saw the Anne Lamott debacle unfolding and my thought was, “Oh good, 500 words will write themselves tonight.” It’s like a snow day for blogging.
Does it really matter what the flap is about? I mean, in the grander scheme of things (a colleague in this experiment says “How meta” which is my new favorite phrase and which I’m going to suck the life out of from overuse), the reason I’m interested in it is because sociology. Also voyeurism. Also schadenfreude. Anne Lamott is a writer who has many followers because she is inspiring. She writes in a way that produces pithy, relatable, encouraging quotes. Today she tweeted the following:
“Is it okay to be a tiny tiny bit tired of Caitlyn? Yes, was very brave but so far he's gone from man to mannequin, instead of man to woman.”
As several people I only know from social media said, “Oh dear.”
When I see shit like this go down events like this occur, my first reaction is to observe and analyze. This kind of detachment is the result of many years of academic paper-writing, when ten pages on, say, the use of metaphor in the expression of abstract concepts, was due by 5 p.m. the following afternoon. Everything is a potential thesis sentence, something to see as yet another example of a simple human truth, the stunning brilliance of which doesn’t crystallize until 2 a.m.
If I were still in academia, I would write a paper on the phenomenon of social media, how its mercurial nature facilitates the human tendency to blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Still only 381 words. 385. Three hundred and eighty-nine. (See what I did there?) And that’s including the footnote about PreMed that made sense at the time, but I struck the lead-in that would have made it even remotely relevant, so now it’s just hanging around down there like an old man’s scrotum, and now that simile has me running over with silent, adolescent giggles.
It’s 11:55. I will close this now, as though it’s important to post it on the day in question. Well it is to me, actually. It really bothered me that I couldn’t post yesterday’s until I finished it this morning. Even though it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. This one, not so much. 11:56. I’d better get a move on. (Footnote time!)1
1 My middle child, a daughter, known to the Nutjobs as “PreMed,” is the wisest, kindest, most loyal, staunchest defender, keenest bullshit detector I know. An old soul of the first water, my spirit animal if you will, who taught me the phrase “ride or die” by saying that I was hers.
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