Now that I have my own laptop and we’re quarantined, I can peruse Twitter more freely, and more often, than I could when I was just using my broke-down iPhone 4s. That’s exactly what I was doing the other day, just scrolling through Twitter when I came across a gripping post that I had to comment on and retweet. Mind you I do this pretty often without fanfare, and had no suspicions that this time would be any different.
But it was.
Shortly after my tweet was sent out, an unfamiliar thing started to happen. I started to see numbers on my notifications bell. Every now and again I’ll have one or two, and if there’s more, it’s usually an “In case you missed it” reminder rather than someone actually engaging with me. After 11 years of being on Twitter, I’ve grown fine with that.
Of course I clicked on the bell to see what it was, and it was a couple of people liking my retweeted post. Oh, how nice. Why, thank you I thought. I left my notifications and returned to my timeline, but it wasn’t long before it started up again. I went back to my notifications, and more likes, a retweet with a retweet of my retweet and comment here and there. That’s amazing! I responded to the comment and went back to my timeline. But the numbers just kept coming on the bell. Being that this is so new to me, I couldn’t help but go and see what was going on. Turns out, it was in fact more likes, more retweets – oh my!
I knew I didn’t have enough followers to garner that many eyeballs on my retweet, so I went back and did some investigating. What happened was the guy whose post I initially retweeted had over 350,000 followers and when I retweeted his post with my comment, he retweeted my retweet, thereby exposing me to all his followers, then 16 other people retweeted me too, and there you have it.
I have to admit, seeing that bell go off with numbers – I couldn’t check my notifications fast enough before another came – was exhilarating. All of a sudden I became Sally Field at the Oscars, “You like me, you really like me!” So much so that my “approval,” me being “liked” was more thrilling to me than what I was actually retweeting about. And the thing is, I didn’t even retweet the post to get likes, but once I got them, they were becoming king.
In total, I got 113 likes, 17 retweets and 2 comments, which clearly is not viral status, but it’s a hell of a lot for me. When notifications began to wear down and my initial excitement did too, it occurred to me that I was more excited about getting likes and retweets than I was about the main reason that I even sent it. And, it was a pretty serious tweet.
It was about a hospital worker who had been working in a Covid-19 unit, with no family of his own here in America, now in ICU asking others to pray for him.
I know, right?
I said a prayer for him immediately, and I still say prayers for him occasionally now that the thrill of getting likes has worn off. But I still can’t believe, after getting the tiniest taste of it, how intoxicating getting likes can be.
I was always one to judge those people. I deemed them so superficial. And hell, if I’m truthful, I was right. That shit is superficial as fuck. But damn if it don’t feel good, and that’s real as fuck as well. Because when you get right down to it, everybody wants to be liked in some form or fashion, and if that’s absent in your life in some form or fashion, how can I judge somebody for wanting to fill that void?
So anyway, I said all that to say, I will try not to judge those people; I understand them better now. Another thing I understand is how important it is to really be grounded in who you are so that you don’t have to rely on superficial thing like likes to bring you joy.
Now that the dust has settled, and I’ve come back to my senses, I’m glad that my retweet got all those likes and retweets if it also means that Mohammed Hamayda – that’s the worker – got that many more prayers. All though one will do, I know what it’s like first-hand to feel the power of many.
What’s not to like about that!
prayers up… https://t.co/JNaIQBQcB4
— Shescribe (@Shescribe) April 16, 2020
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