Me and my buddy Lance have joked around a few times about how many of our individual friends knows about either he or I because we tweet to each other. He's got followers, I've got followers, and a lot of his followers end up following me and a lot of my followers end up following him. And he follows some of my friends and I follow some of his friends, you get the point. But a lot of his friends I've never met in-person and half of my friends he's never met in-person.
<sidebar>Which is kinda of odd now that I think about it because Lance and I did go to high school together though we didn't hang out much and we were a year a part.<endsidebar>
And because Lance and I are just as social in real-life as we are on the TwitterNets, a lot of times we meet each others friends (that we know from Twitter only) in actual real-life places and events. Yes, REAL LIFE! Who woulda thought it!
Typically, it goes something like this:
Lance: Mike, this my homeboy "XXXX". He's @XXXX on Twitter. [Lance speaks to "XXXX] Mike is @mcarroll-something on Twitter.
Me: [speaking to "XXXX"] Oh, yeah what's up man, that tweet about [insert rapper or sports figure or video vixen name here] was hilarious, good to meet you.
XXXX: Oh yeah man that was funny to me. I saw your tweet about your blogpost on DMV slang, that was pretty funny.
And that's it. All potential awkwardness about knowing someone via the InterWeb but NOT REALLY knowing them in-person, avoided. From there, if both parties are cool, everything is cool. If one or both don't like one-another, that's normal too. But at least the awkward Twintroduction is out of the way.
The "Twintroduction" is something I think Lance and I both have tons of practice at because we're both on Twitter "meeting" people and having various random convesations. In general though, I think cool and down-to-earth people tend to become friends with, follow and constantly communicate on Twitter, or otherwise regularly interact with other cool and down-to-earth people. For that reason, I'm not surprised that Lance and my friends get along well in real life just like me and his friends get along well in real life. But I can imagine it's not so peachy-keen for everyone. Hell, I'm sure I'll have an awkward "I know you on Twitter but I don't really know or want to really know you" moment. It's not like I'm stalking Alicia Keys on Twitter while waiting to meet her in real life and say "You don't remember when I tweeted you about wanting to give birth to your next child"... Nothing of the sort.
2 comments:
LOL you are a fool for this one. I didn't really think you were going to put up a post about this. But you make very valid points.
I do recall when I first did the "Twintroduction", it was easier that way. I'm not sure if ya'll were following each other or not but I know that I had RTed both of ya'll on a frequent basis so I'm sure the twitter name at least sounded familiar.
I will admit I've done this several other times, and even @Reds... has done this to me when I ask her about someone or who someone is. My boy @MikeX does it all the time, he'll ask who is @xxxxx. I think my boy @Krayzie got his name tatooed to his arm, sike nah, but kind of. Honestly at the next TweetUp that someone has we should have "Hello My Name is" tags on with our Twitter names on it. Twitter names are easier to remember that real names at times (except for the people that change theirs every other month)...
I think the Twintroduction is definitely the easier way to go. It's less confusing I guess.
It's much better than my dudes from Capitol Heights introducing me to people as "Bone" in person to other adults. Like I'm a gang member or something. I mean, we're all over 28 at this point, I think introducing me by my first name and then letting someone naturally see that I have a nickname is the proper way to go about it but I guess it's just me, lol.
I agree that the Twitter names are often easier to remember.
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