The woman at reception told me she liked my Twitter
At the barre class I just joined, the lovely woman at the reception desk told me she enjoyed my Twitter account, as she entered my details into the system.
It's a sort of peculiar modern thing to be liked for the things you type in 140-character chunks, but mostly I've learned to roll with it. The alternative would be much worse: a world in which strangers told me they hated me for the things I wrote on the internet. (I'm sure those people exist, but luckily they must be shy and retiring in real life, as I have never met one of them.) I say I've learned to roll with it, but that is only half the story. It will always be weird when people recognise my name. I don't believe there is a writer on earth for whom recognition on some level is not a desired outcome. I talk a lot, I'm a show-off, and praise the lord, the internet is happy to accommodate these things.
I always think of myself as both Nigerianly and Britishly private. Which is to say: I reveal nothing of great and granular importance on the internet, not even in the hidden and locked accounts on different platforms. This is not to say I am not truthful or honest; on the contrary, my internet-self is perhaps the most unfiltered version of myself there is. You cannot, for example, read my Twitter feed and not get a glimpse of who I am, and what I stand for. But it is a slice, not the whole pie, and so it can be a little alarming when people I don't know purport to know me, based only on the content of that slice. When people nudge and wink at me, or send me things they just know I will like, I have to do a little head shake, and marvel at the internet machine that makes shallowly intimate bedfellows of us all. You may know parts of me, but the whole is for me only. I bought it free and clear, cash down. Everything else is on lease. PS: I am not unique in this. It is true for all of us.
This is a clear case of 'my diamond shoes are too tight!' so let me finish this letter by repeating that recognition, for my work—or my excellent twitter jokes—is a dream for me. Once, in New Orleans, a lady at the hotel check-in recognised my name from Twitter and took us out on a political march, and drinking a couple of times. We're friends now. In a bookshop in Lagos, Nigeria, a stranger asked about my relationship status based on a piece I'd done for The Guardian (her disappointment with my answer was palpable). Years back, on the train to Harlem during a sabbatical, a young black British woman approached me saying she recognised me from Twitter. We're friends now. There are so many stories like this. Based on that slice, I have been smiled at, hugged, become a secret-keeper and all other good things. I can't be mad at that.
Even so, let this internet-made image be our collective watchword. Nobody likes the needlessly overfamiliar, ya dig?
Make good decisions this week!