Make Way For Twidiots

Confession: I've only been on Twitter for a couple months. And I joined only after a woman twice my age told me I "might as well not exist professionally" without a Twitter handle. Harsh, but motivational words.

My first few weeks as a Tweeter were bumpy (and by "first few weeks" I mean now, months later, they're still bumpy). The Twitter lexicon is a mix of wingdings and abbreviations that makes about as much sense as Mandarin to a Twidiot like me.

Take, for example, the MT. Recently I noticed a bumper crop of the acronym showing up in my feed. Hoping context might give me some hint at its meaning I spent an embarrassing amount of time scanning "MT" tweets, but to no avail.

Then, just as the feelings of digital rejection were sinking in, this appeared in my feed:

@MargaretAtwood: "Okay, this is stupid..but what is an MT?"

I blinked, read it again. Was this real? Was Margaret Atwood, Twitter extraordinaire and literary heroine genius of my life asking my same Twidiot question?!

A moment later:

@MargaretAtwood: "@jorence: Thank you! ("modified (re)tweet", for those like me who didn't know..)"

Those like her. Those like me like her! It was the best I'd ever felt not knowing something.

The point of this episode of Twidiocy is that I have to remind myself—and maybe those of you in the same boat as Margaret Atwood and myself—that it's actually natural to need some time to familiarize ourselves with the myriad of digital applications that are rapidly taking over our lives. As millennials, it seems we're supposed to know how to do this stuff. As a generation, society has defined us by our supposed ability to Tweet while sleeping, Facebook in traffic, and text while gchatting and Tumblring all at once. But I'm here to admit, on behalf of my fellow digital dunces, it's not as easy as the Baby Boomers think we make it look. I'm OK with that. Or at least I'm getting more OK with that. And having Margaret Atwood in my camp doesn't hurt too much either.

Photo Credit: By New York : Underwood & Underwood, publishers (US-LOC) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons