3939

This will be a post in which I complain about the number of Twitter followers I have. If this sounds like it’ll be annoying to read, well, you’re probably right. Feel free to continue and/or complain as you see fit but don’t try to claim you weren’t warned.

I like Twitter. I think. I do feel compelled to be on it and maybe as a result I just tell myself I like it. But I liked it a lot more at, say, the beginning of 2019 when I had over 4000 followers and, more importantly, that number had been increasing for a while. It moved in the way that these (like so many) things do, a little forward, a little back. I was ploddingly collecting people interested in keeping up with my comings and goings, my doings or doings not, and it was good (enough).

And then… something happened. That precious number began getting smaller. I was losing followers. And I had no idea why. 

Was it because I was performing less often? Getting less funny? Becoming too political? Not political enough? Had I simply peaked? Was hitting 4000 Twitter followers my own sad version of the Sports Illustrated cover “jinx”? Had I been blackballed from comedy? From life? Have I been dead this whole time?! Was I getting sensed in a sixth way!?!

Those last few seem unlikely but, truly, I do not know.

Now I’m down to 3939 followers. It’s an objectively attractive arrangement of digits.

Not as attractive as

this one, but still.

And it’s a fine number of people. It’s arguably more than I deserve, if “deserving Twitter followers” is even a thing. 

Then again, it’s not the number of followers I have that is concerning, it’s the direction that number is moving in. That is, I think I’d feel just as confused and annoyed if I had 40K— or even 400K— and my follower count suddenly pulled an Icarus and began plummeting toward salty obscurity.

And further, it’s not concerning because my vanity can’t accept I’m losing followers. It’s concerning because my vanity can’t accept being thwarted by the mystery of it all. This is about my frustration at my lack of insight over anything else. Luckily for the progression of this post, I have what I’ve decided is a theory!

The follower number is best understood as a clout barometer.

That (precious) number and the direction (and speed) it’s moving in is not about who you are on Twitter; it’s about who you are off of it. That (oh so precious) number indicates who you are as a public person in general. It’s a “fame-o-meter” (pronounced… never).

And sure, you can be good or bad at Twitter and that can help or hinder you. But barring a few exceptions— like people who have lost or gained TV shows through their tweets— you’re not gonna be able to make your Potential Follower Range wider from within the app without incredibly poor judgment or the right mix of talent and luck. And for better and worse, I am not among those few exceptions.

But I have this website, which has been offline for almost a year. And now I’m going to use it for a little experiment.

I’ve switched hosts, overhauled my site, and written a bunch over the past few months. I managed to finish a handful of things I like well enough to get this blog rolling, and by next month (December) I’ll be ready to write on a regular basis and make this whole thing public. My guess (hope) is that this website’s mere existence will be enough to stop the hemorrhaging of followers and, if it’s actually good, people might start coming back.

Or I’ll discover that the world is just not really interested in what Natasha Muse has to say these days, regardless of what I do.

No matter which way this all hashes out, though, I’ll probably regret publishing this vapid navel-glancing some day. I already feel embarrassed about this post for multiple reasons. (Not the least of which is that it implies I’m only starting this blog for Twitter followers.)

But I want to get better at writing, and hiding from every hint of failure isn’t going to get me anywhere; so instead I’m throwing in a fourth-wall break to switch up the tone and ask you, Deer Reader, to leave a comment below, even if it’s just to let me know you made it all the way to the end, too.