I was told I needed “followers.” These were people who would sign on to
receive my messages, or “tweets,” whatever those might turn out to be. I
hummed a few bars from “Mockingbird Hill”–Tra-la-la, twittly-deedee–and
sacrificed some of my hair at the crossroads, invoking Hermes the
Communicator. He duly appeared in the form of media guru McLean Greaves, who loosed
his carrier pigeons to four of his hundreds of Twitterbuddies; and with
their aid, I soon had a few thousand people I didn’t know sending me
messages like “OMG! Is it really you?” “I love it when old ladies blog,”
one early follower remarked. —Margaret Atwood