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Why David Sedaris Doesn't Use Twitter

Posted on August 29, 2012     1 Comment

I was lusting after the buttery popcorn infiltrating my nostrils as I waited in line to have my book signed by David Sedaris. My eyes drifted towards the sign that read ‘BAR UPSTAIRS’ and ‘NO CAMERAS OR PHOTOS’ in threatening capitals. Devar asked me what I was going to say as he ignored the threatening sign and took a photo of the line. I didn’t know. Although he is one of my favourite authors, I assumed he would ask the typical questions authors ask their adoring fans – “know any good jokes?” or “what do you do?” – and I wanted to get it over and done with to reduce the risk of saying something foolish. Like the lady in front of me who was contemplating boasting about how she named her imaginary boyfriend after him. David started signing my book, he asked me how much money I earn and in return I asked what he thought of Australia. “It is expensive” he said, “and hot” I added, just in case he was needing another adjective to explain Australia. It had been quite humid that day and Perthians love to complain about the weather. My interaction with him was short and sweet, he wrote “I’m so happy you can walk” in one of my books and drew a dog in another book.

The show consisted of David reading essays from The New Yorker, a piece he wrote for British paper entitled ‘If I Could Change The World’, diary entries and questions from the audience. The most amusing part of the show was a story about his female friend, who preferred to remain nameless, she also preferred to catch her poop in her hand when using the toilet instead of letting it make a horrid plop sound in the toilet bowl. That would be so embarrassing.

During the show Mark Trammell replied to my tweet, “Get him on Twitter!” he exclaimed. After two glasses of wine I decided to line up again after the show to ask David why he doesn’t join in on the Twitter fun and tweet about eating sandwiches, crazy dreams he had last night, how losing socks really sucks and other random observations or thoughts in 140 characters or less. I didn’t ask it in that way. It escaped my mouth in a more “me again, so that Twitter thing, a guy I follow who works there wants to know why you don’t do it?” manner of speaking. He hungrily consumed a plate of chorizo and salad had been placed in front of him while I asked my twittastic question. He made the ‘let me just finish chewing this’ universal motion and then tried to explain the Twitter predicament. Apparently someone had already created a David Sedaris account on Twitter, he then paid someone to switch the account over to him, but didn’t really know what it was or what to do with it once it was his. So there it sits, with over 4000+ followers and no actual tweets. I tried to convince him he should tweet (join the cool kids, drink the koolaid, follow the leader) but he didn’t seem convinced. I wanted to say “no one understands Twitter, David” but I didn’t want to scare him with inception like comments. I instead urged him to tweet and wrote down my username and the address of my account in case he wanted to see what it was all about and required guidance. In that moment I thought of myself as a sort of Mother Teresa of tweeting – I could guide him into over one million followers and we would DM about what type of background colour he should use. It would be awesome.

As he put another forkful of sausage into his mouth I came back to reality and thanked him for the performance as he waved on the next question. Later I pondered if he would screw up the piece of paper from the Aussie girl who totally thought he should tweet or figure out what Twitter was at least. It then occurred to me the kind of subjects I tweet about.

So if you’re ever at a David Sedaris show or book signing and he mentions this strange Australian girl who tweets too much about Skyrim or boobs and tried to force convince him that Twitter was the shit and he laughed about it later in his hotel room wasn’t convinced. Please don’t judge me. At least I’m not the girl who pooped into her hand and gently lowered it into the toilet bowl because she didn’t want it to make that socially unacceptable plop sound in the toilet bowl.

If I was her I would at least tweet about it.