Who says writing doesn’t pay much?  I just read that popular reality TV show star, entrepreneur, and self-promoter Kim Kardashian earns $10,000 for every tweet she sends. This amounts to as much as $71 per character and the same for the spaces between them. At this rate of pay, “writer” or just plain “tweeter” could become occupations as desirable as “Hollywood celebrity.”

This news item caught my attention because I’m in charge of Facebook and Twitter messaging for my church, a responsibility I usually forget or, when I remember it, avoid.  Why?  I’m a social media wallflower.  On Facebook, to be part of the popular crowd I would have to “like” the fact that someone just posted a recent photo of their lunch or their cat.   While on vacation, I would have to remember to take and post poorly lighted pictures of myself from my cell phone. And I would need to let everyone know daily that I was either happy as a clam or feeling nearly suicidal.

At least I can make sense of Facebook.  I can immediately know what many of my paltry 160 friends are doing at any given time and how they feel about it.  Twitter is much more difficult to appreciate.  Here are two tweets, which I just received on my TweetDeck that illustrate why: 1) It’s not easy peasy lemon squeezy, it’s difficult difficult lemon difficult.  2) let me show you them. / my nose is all boogery. / sent mail. One thing done.  (‘The latter, an example of twaiku — Twitter haiku — would leave Basho, Buson and Issa reeling)  Then there are the descriptions of the tweeters themselves:  1.) Mommy, pottymouth, word nerd, Gunny’s wife.  2.) It begins with me covered in sperm, trapped in my old man’s balls. Then, suddenly… ESCAPE!   I’m sure you’ll agree that forming a relationship with these authors could be tricky.  How would you start a conversation? Surprisingly, many tweeters have an extraordinary number of followers, though why this occurs is not always clear.  Today, I did detect one characteristic that seems to separate the popular birds (“birds” in the British sense) from the rest of the flock and that is photos showing cleavage.

Now that I’ve completed this first phase of research and analysis, as I approach my Facebook duties, I feel more confident, upbeat, ready to resume my communication duties with zest.  (Click “like” here.)  In my Twitter mode I am preparing a series of mystical sounding but unintelligible ramblings while searching for a Buddhist with cleavage.  I’m setting my sights low to begin with, only $50 per tweet.