I joined Twitter in 2016 because ... well, I'm not entirely sure why. To promote this blog? To promote my academic career without being obnoxious about it in person? To follow journalists, favorite authors, and celebrities? The mind boggles.
For whatever reason, I joined Twitter. Two and a half years in I still can't say I entirely "get" Twitter (at least it makes more sense than Instagram...). Twitter is weirdly different than Facebook. Facebook is a way to stay in touch with people you know in real life, whether you really want to or not. Twitter is like standing in a public place saying random things where your friends might wander by amid the flurry of self-proclaimed "entrepreneurs." Oddly, Twitter reminds me of Livejournal: you make random connections with strangers (yes, I'm old enough to remember Livejournal. I do miss being able to write paragraphs, though, which is probably why I started a blog ... but I digress).
I've recently had some interesting things happen on Twitter. A tweet I randomly wrote about philosophy got over a 100 likes, which doesn't sound like much, but---
--But forget all that, because OMG! OMG! OMG! LeVar Burton retweeted me! But you don't have to take my word for it.
I was looking for ways to celebrate Black History Month from a science fiction angle. I recently read N. K. Jemisin's How Long 'Til Black Future Month?, and I'm currently reading Octavia Butler's Fledgling (one of the few Butler books I haven't gotten to yet). I noticed that LeVar Burton's awesome podcast LeVar Burton Reads recently covered a story by Science Fiction Grand Master Samuel R. Delany. This episode includes musical accompaniment and Burton's interview with Delany at the end. Check it out here or wherever you get podcasts! Burton has also read stories by Jemisin and Butler in addition to stories by other great black speculative fiction authors like Nalo Hopkinson, Nisi Shawl, and Nnedi Okorafor, so be sure to check those episodes out, too! I really can't recommend LeVar Burton Reads highly enough.
On a bit of a lark, I put "@levarburton" on the tweet... and he retweeted it! (Or maybe it was a publicist or assistant or whatever. I don't know how this works.)
If you're reading this blog, there's a good chance you at least know LeVar Burton from his role as Geordi LaForge on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He also of course played Kunta Kinte in the Roots miniseries.
He also hosted Reading Rainbow for over 20 years. As a kid in the 80's, LeVar Burton taught me to take a look, it's in a book... He's at least partially responsible for my love of reading that in turn led to me being a big fan of science fiction literature and a professor of philosophy (as a professor of mine once said, in the humanities we read books and say things about them, which come to think of it, is a lot like Reading Rainbow...).
I also watched Star Trek: The Next Generation every day for several years as a teenager, and it continues to be one of my all-time favorite shows (someday I hope to write a post called, "Star Trek: TNG: A Show for Grownups, and Wesley). Burton also just today won the 2019 Inamori Ethics Prize for his dedication to literacy and AIDS prevention. Is there anything he can't do?
I get curmudgeonly about the cult of celebrity, but when it comes to LeVar Burton, I totally get it. So this retweet is actually pretty special for me, as cheesy as that may sound. The only thing better would be to meet him in person, although if I ever did I very well may have the same reaction the character Troy (played by Donald Glover) had upon meeting Burton in the TV show Community (see below).
So, that was exciting!
So far I've also made real professional connections on Twitter. For example, I recently joined the editorial board of a series called Asian Philosophical Texts through a Twitter connection, and my upcoming Skype conversation with two groups in Singapore was spurred through Twitter.
The other day I sat down to write a tweet about something that occurred to me in my personal identity class that has bothered me for decades about the way people talk about Asian (particularly South Asian) philosophy. Totally to my surprise, it has as of now 138 likes and 21 retweets.
Sure, that's nothing compared to someone who's been working on their Twitter presence or an actual famous person like LeVar Burton, but it's probably my most popular tweet so far. And it's totally unexpected. Plenty of my tweets get no likes at all, which is honestly what I expect.
Twitter, much like life itself, seldom makes complete sense. But so far it's been kind of fun. Maybe I'll stick around for awhile.
Maybe you, dear reader, have had your own adventures in the Twitterverse. Tell me about them! Follow me on Twitter, and we can talk there!
And since this is the last day of February, I'd also like to wish LeVar Burton (if he happens to read this) and everyone else an educational Black History Month!
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