I’ll Take Robots

Unless you’re sexy, or already well-connected, the internet feels like high school all over again.  You want to be noticed, but you’re insecure, a bit shy, and lacking self-confidence.  You try putting yourself out there only to be rejected, and you crawl back into your book, where you feel safe.

You’d think that the trauma, after all these years, might diminish a little.  Maybe it does for some people.  My career has turned into a train wreck and my efforts as a fiction writer haven’t exactly been welcomed with open arms.  But, I understand, one must build a platform.

I have another life on the internet.  One where I don’t use a pen name.  In that internet world, where I’ve actually published two non-fiction books, nobody pays me much mind.  I’ve got a blog, a Twitter account, and a Goodreads account.  I tried to grow my Twitter following, and it has been very slow going.

As K. Marvin Bruce, I also have this blog and a Twitter account.  If my novels ever get published I’ll have a Goodreads account as well.  But I noticed something.  Last week my Twitter account (which is about 2 years old) had no followers.  None.  That won’t impress a potential publisher.  I decided to try to get some followers.

To do that, you have to follow others.  The interesting thing is that my Twitter account here, in this alternate internet identity, has grown much faster than my Twitter account in my real name.  I was elated.  Then somebody suggested the followers might be robots.

What?  The only fans of my fiction are non-sentient?  That’s quite a blow.  But then I remember Philip K. Dick.  If androids do dream of electric sheep, I’m in good company indeed.  I wasn’t popular in high school, and I’m not popular now.  I’ll take robots.