It’s Interesting That Block Quoting Yourself in a Tweet Is Acceptable

Do you agree?

We live in a shameless time, but there are still a number of things on Twitter that carry with them a modicum of shame: retweeting a compliment; accepting a blue check mark; retweeting yourself at an opportune time; tweeting a joke at someone and putting a period before the @ so everyone else can see it, too; tweeting in general; and so on. These things are still done, but often with a shame related cost-benefit analysis. What isn’t on that list, though, I don’t think, is: taking a screenshot of your writing and attaching it to a link to your piece. And isn’t that interesting?

Hm???

Or maybe it isn’t???????

Many people do this, and I love so many of them, and I’m not going to single out anyone because I’m a coward and I don’t want anyone to be mad at me, but you can imagine, and also I will tell you that Andy Cush did it recently. Close your eyes and imagine this: someone is writing something, and then she publishes it, and then she takes a screenshot of it, and then she cuts out a little part of the writing, and then she attaches that image to her link tweet.

Can you see it?

The effect is a self quote, which is why it’s odd to me that the practice is so widely accepted. Choosing which is going to be the most enticing piece of your writing and then using it to promote yourself as if you are not yourself? Seems weird to me. Out-of-body self promotion. Imagine if I tweeted this:

“The effect is a self quote, which is why it’s odd to me that the practice is so widely accepted.” [link to this]

I would be weird if I tweeted that, in my opinion. I imagine it would be pasted into Slack channels accompanied by either an ellipses or the “think” emoji, which would be devastating.

But this isn’t weird? And instead it’s normal.

Interesting.

Andy Cush even did it!