Sooo last night I decided to "participate" in the #YALITCHAT on Twitter. I write YA, right? All the cool kids are doing it, right? I'm cool, right?
Wrong!
For the purpose of explaining my experience, I shall create a fake feed. I will call myself @moron when tweeting.
Katie: (watches feed with intense concentration)
@coolkid Hello everyone! I am so excited about tonight! Great topic!
Katie: Hmm... where do I find the topic? (leans in and scans entire screen)
@fungirl Look! @coolkid is here! let's get this party started.
@agent Hey @coolkid. I agree. That YA book should be shelved separately.
Katie: What the? What YA book? Where?
@readerman Y'all are having so much fun! I just had to pop in! Hey @agent!
Katie: fun? Where's the fun? Who is having fun?
@writernerd I LOVE #yalitchat!!!! YAY!
Katie: totally lost
@referree RT @agent Hey @coolkid. I agree. That YA book should be shelved separately.
Katie: huh? Who is @coolkid? (clicks on @coolkid and discovers she is an editorial assistant) cool. (clicks back to feed)
has missed 55 new tweets.
Katie: Damn!
@bookchic @agent Do you look at manuscripts from people who you have previously rejected?
INSERT 42 new tweets that make no sense.
Katie: Maybe I should ask a question? (takes two full minutes typing question, including proper #yalitchat hashtag)
@referee Please hold all questions. We are having a one-to-one right now. @moron
Katie: oops?! Where is this one-to one? At lease 70 people are tweeting?
@moron @referee. sorry :-(
@referee @moron. Now we are ready. RT question from @moron.
Katie: (sees answer and it's so vague that I might as well not have even asked it. Decides to see who @bookchic is)
has missed 277 tweets - I'm not kidding. I wrote down the number of tweets I missed.
Katie: dang! I've missed the whole conversation!
TWITTER FAIL
Lessons Learned:
1.To participate in any kind of lit chat, you must have fancy twitter software like tweetdeck or tweetchat.
2. @realjohngreen's wife had a baby yesterday. (I learned that during chat. Yay John!!!!!)
3. People will follow you simply because you are participating.
4. There is a referee - unless that avatar was just a girl in a striped shirt?
5. People love these chats and claim to "learn a lot." I haven't figured that one out yet.
P.S. I've asked SF to post about her experience with Twitter after me and I am predicting she won't even understand my fake feed. That's why we love each other. We are dual dorks :-)
P.P.S. I'll tweet about this post. Feel free to follow us and retweet :-)
SF: Okay, so none of that made sense to me at all. I can't even follow Katie's rundown--and who knew there was actually software called tweetdeck or tweet chat?? The only time I've ever appeared on Twitter (yep--all of the brilliant PlotThis tweets are from Katie) was when Katie and I sat and IM'd each other on Twitter while we were watching Project Runway about six months ago.
I just got on Twitter this morning (after searching through my email account for that ever elusive password and username), and I can't even figure out how to give my status update.
It's official. I am old. Technology has left me in the dust. I guess I'll just stay on Facebook with the rest of the grannies . . . unless someone wants to give me a tutorial--who's that avatar person? Think she's available for a quick online tutorial? Gawd . . . I sound like my mother.
Dual dorks,
sf and katie
18 comments:
Hilarious. For the record, those chats are very tricky to follow. But I've grown quite fond of Twitter mainly because I have lots of random thoughts throughout the day that I can now share freely with the world.
What can I say, I'm a narcissist.
Whew---I am not the only one who couldn't figure it out! And I keep telling myself I will figure it out and particpate in the YA litchats- and then the weeks go by...
thanks for the lesson though--I am determined to do it next week!!!!
get tweetchat.com - its much easier
I do not speak "twitterese" and am therefore doubly in the dark here. Are you sure you wrote all of that in English?! :-)
On Facebook with the rest of the grannies." That's where I belong.
OMGosh!! I'm laughing my head off! I like to go back and read the transcript after the chat. That's where I find the value in them. If you come in late at all (like I did last night), then you're lost.
And your fake feed is EXACTLY like the chat! LOVE IT!
I'm not old and I still can't follow them. At all! Add me to the twitter fail pile. Still, tomorrow is a new day and I think there's hope for me yet. We shall see.
Love Twitter, but yes it can be confusing.
BTW your post was hilarious and really hit home - totally spot on. I remember an #asktheagent chat I was completely lost in... Tweetdeck is awesome - I highly recommend it. I don't use the web anymore :o)
Good Luck with the next one!
OH MY GOODNESS ... I was laughing out loud through this entire post. I don't Twitter ... don't think I'll even bother starting ... too much time! Hilarious!
Twitter is math. I don't go near it. Ever.
I actually tried to read the transcript this morning and I got confused. I can't imagine how confusing it must have been when it happened live!
Twitter and I parted ways long ago, I prefer cardinals anyway.
I haven't laughed this hard in a while!!! Too funny, Katie and so true. I feel the same way about #kidlitchat. I tried it twice and couldn't keep up with it. You blink or scroll back to catch something you missed and you miss a gazillion more Tweets.
Loved this post!!!
Ha! Yes. I think those chats would be much easier to follow if there weren't so many chimer-inners.
But what do I know? I'm old. See you on FB, granny.
Hi-larious. Katie, you are so adorable. I can just imagine you sitting in front of the screen, "Well, all be. What in the world?" I don't know that you actually talk like this, but because I've heard your southern accent I'd like to think that you do.
Oh I can totally relate! I've tried to follow #yalitchat before too (and failed miserably). It seems like just when I start to understand Twitter, I learn about some other part of it and get confused again!
SO FUNNY! I'm actually afraid to Tweet because I know I'll come off as an idiot! I applaud your courage in trying to enter a tweetchat or chweet or whatever the kids are calling it these days...
Oh my gawd--I can't follow that yet either! Someone asked if I'd like to participate as a guest. I had no idea how to DM her back, so I just emailed her, haha.
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