My Dear Nieces & Nephews,

I’ve been getting a bit of flak lately, from the usual sources, and from some new ones. You’ve seen the blog posts. A lot of people are taking flak, actually.

People are angry that they don’t have the followers they feel they deserve. They aren’t getting the follow-backs they want. When they try to engage someone in the timeline, sometimes they’re met with silence.

To some extent every person on Twitter deals with these situations & resulting feelings. Every person. To some extent.

Others are either under-medicated, over-medicated, reaching a psychological impasse, or are simply more ambitious than they are good or patient.

So many people have encouraged me here, been nice, friendly, inspirational, that it bothers me that I would even have to write this post at all. More than 99.9% of the people I know, or know of, are perfectly wonderful. To them, to the vast majority, you can stop reading now. What follows is only for the malcontents, the people who’ve twisted their guts into balloon knots over Twitter and are angry, jealous, bitter, lashing out, and in one case raving. Here goes:

Don’t make me make a list why you may not be getting everything you want. Don’t ask me if you’re taking this too seriously. Don’t ask me if you have a personality disorder. I’ll address my comments assuming you’re funny and smart and different and good at Twitter.

No one’s getting paid to tweet. I only know perhaps five people who’ve been able to convert Twitter success into lucrative outside work. Five people in two years. Think about that before you turn cannibal for your dreamt-of slice of Twitter pie, before you commit seppuku in the timeline.

“This free entertainment source is consuming me, making me angry.” Turn it off. Leave the rest of us alone. You are abusive.

You think I have too many followers on Twitter? Do you get to decide? They don’t tithe, you know. I have had some very kind people recommend me, that’s true (and much appreciated), but I’ve also written approximately fifteen jokes a day, every day, for two years. They haven’t all worked, but I’ve tried to make them different from everyone else’s and put in the time thinking about how they might work best and I go back over them later and clean them up. Whether they’ve been any good or not is up to the reader.

Do you think I spend too much time here, or not enough? Do you think I take it too seriously or not seriously enough? That’s for me to decide, thanks. I’ll work out the balance on my own. Maybe ask these questions of yourself, instead.

You think I’m not political enough, following enough people, or that I don’t engage people enough? I didn’t hold your hand when you melted down, or follow you when I read your page? Maybe you noticed that I unfollowed you when I saw you being unnecessarily awful to someone and you don’t know how to process that. I know! Make ME the bad guy!

Sorry. No, really, I am sorry. I’m already spending a lot of time on these jokes. I really don’t have more to give. Not here, anyway.

The US Marines were more impassive and cool at Fallujah than you currently are on Twitter. Think about that.

I’m giving what I’m giving for free. For free. It would be nice if people didn’t get angry about it, or ask me to submit to orders or abuse. Read the jokes or don’t. Like them or don’t. Follow or don’t. Unfollow or don’t. When I hit Send, the only thing on my mind is that this joke is getting someone, somewhere to feel happier & giddier than before he/she read it. That. Is. It.

I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing, the way I’ve been doing it. If that’s painful for you in any way, or fills you with some kind of anguish, I think you know which button on my page you need to push. And we don’t need to talk about it. Ever. EVER.

This post isn’t a debate. I now consider this matter closed, at least as far as my participation in it goes.

If you’re one of the ones I told to read-no-further back there, I’m sorry you had to see that. Want to go Six Flags next Thursday, around 2?

Your affectionate uncle,

Dynamite