Towards A Theory Of Subtweeting

by Alexandra Molotkow

– If it happened in private, did it really happen? Yes and it’s over forever, but you have material, and material lasts forever.

– Pain is unpleasant but the upshot of pain is material.

– In the olden days, if you were in pain but not creative, you would have to just hold all the pain. Even if you were creative you would have to hunker down and create your thing, feeling pain all the while. Now, every feeling inspired by another person is material and all material is instant.

– I am not saying don’t engage with people directly. I am saying that, from a utilitarian standpoint, if you saved your statement for an audience you could be entertaining dozens rather than bothering one person.

– “Can you ever really know someone?” No but it’s not a big deal. In the olden days you addressed one person, who transmogrified you into some private figment you could never know. Now we all toss content into a common trough that each of us digs through individually. Just like at a potluck.

– Being subtweeted is the clearest possible view of whatever weird homunculus you’ve become to your loved ones.

– A subtweet doesn’t have to be intentional! Maybe you are obsessed with X and all your tweets are beautiful tributes to a Y who is realer than the X who inspired them, if X is not online.

– You tell people more by accident than on purpose.

– Consider your audience. Does it matter if their pleasure comes at your expense? You’re still giving pleasure.

– That’s the bright side of making a fool of yourself, just as material is the bright side of being made a fool of.

– What this means: the subtweet that says to the Internet what you can’t say to one person is a higher form than the subtweet that says to the Internet what you won’t say to one person. The second is only as interesting as you are, while sadness, failure, and desperation are always interesting regardless of the vector.

– Studies have shown the average person can feel for roughly 6 percent of people, which means there are 420,000,000 people in the world you could feel for.

– Even talking about subtweeting is kind of a subtweet.

– A conversation in subtweets is probably a more honest conversation.

“Infinite regress of homunculus,” original work by Jennifer Garcia (Reverie), derivative work: Pbroks13, derivative work of derivative work: Was a bee. Via Wikimedia Commons.