So many sites, so little to say

Anti-social media, and anti-social conversations

As opening lines go, it didn’t quite match “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or “it was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”. It wasn’t even: “Yo, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want”.

I’ve just looked it up and my very first tweet, in August 2009, was: “Brown's rural advisor says Government "wrong" to ignore market towns in the recession.” With a now-dead link to a story I had written.

I was the London Editor for the Western Morning News at the time, and although I don’t remember that story (or who the adviser was) I wrote variations of that story over several years.

And I have also written, rewritten, posted and (very occasionally) deleted thousands upon thousands of tweets since. Over time I built a following of more than 120,000, which felt like a bigger deal than it was really. (Funny jokes about politics always seemed to do better for me than posting the same thing as the rest of the lobby.) I’ve gone viral. I’ve had pile-ons. I’ve apologised. I’ve typed out and then deleted career-ending musings without pressing post. Fun times.

Twitter was useful both for promoting my journalistic work through links, but also generating sales for stand-up shows or my book. I’m not narcissistic enough to have a moral view on Twitter/X/Musk, and I’m also not sure me staying or leaving will give the richest man on the planet sleepless nights.

It’s a business. It was useful as a news source, it was entertaining, and it was capable of helping many people, including journalists, to build an independent profile, something that was unheard of a generation earlier. And then gradually it became clear that it wasn’t. When it felt like it was becoming less useful, I diversified here into Substack.

Got into a bit of Instagram.

Signed up for Threads.

A bit of TikTok.

Tried (and repeatedly failed) to get my head around LinkedIn.

Briefly Mastadon?!?!?!

And now Bluesky. (Although it turned out I had signed up in February and forgotten.)

Please feel free to follow on some/all/none of them.

Yes Bluesky is a bit like Twitter. But building a following takes time, and building a following on six platforms will take more time than I have. In fact posting on all those sites will take so much time I won’t have any time left to do anything worth posting about.

But I am just starting to think about what a stand-up show next year might look like, and am wondering how easy it will be to drive ticket sales across all of these different sites. Which might affect how many shows I do, and where.*

For now I better get back to posting. And at least the main photo at the top of this means I have managed to add my new silver shoes to yet another social media site. They are literally multi-platform shoes.

*Incidentally, any ideas for a vaguely political, non-time sensitive title for a show appreciated. Previously I’ve done: This. Is. Not. Normal. (2019), Who Is In Charge Here? (2022) and Poll Dancer (2024). You’ll be able to do better I’m sure. See you in the comments.

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Don't speak, I know just what you're sayin'

I am adding “announcing that one is leaving a social media platform” to the same list of grotesque behaviour that should be banned, along with “talking about your dreams”, “describing a train delay in detail” and, as happened to me at a party last night, turning to someone who is 42 and saying “you’ll be turning 50 soon, won’t you?”

Feel free to send me your own examples of social hate speech in the comments.

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I have been spending a lot of time in bookshops. Not buying them (although I love to buy a book – it feels so grown-up and glamorous and old-fashioned) but I have been signing them. Well mine.

One of the revelations about publishing a book was discovering how pleased shops were if you offered to sign one. Once you’ve got over the ego-swelling cringe of declaring in the library-like quiet “this is my book, would you like me to sign it?” you realise the shopkeepers are always more pleased than the author.

Whenever I post online (on every platform) that I’ve just signed my book in a shop, someone always asks if you have to ask permission first. Truth is, if you don’t, they don’t know to put one of those nice little “signed by the author” stickers on the cover. And the old adage “a signed book is a sold book” is true.

I’ve hit the motherload a couple of times in Waterstones branches recently (Taunton and Trafalgar Square, London) where they had great piles of them. Right on the new non-fiction table. Perfect for Christmas shopping.

Anyway, if you want a rare unsigned one you can order it here. Or keep your eye out in a shop near you.